Happiness Mirage
by Hearts' Abyss
Summary: Eren's life isn't exactly filled with sunshine and rainbows, but it's something that he's relatively content with... or, at least, it was before he's landed with a new neighbour. The neighbour's not the only thing that changes, though, because other, darker, things begin to surface soon after... [Major Character Death; further A/N inside]
1. Beginning

_**A/N: **This was originally written for the Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan 2014 Big Bang... but, thanks to certain circumstances, the story was removed and I'm simply re-uploading it. Immeasurable thanks go to my fellow writers (especially those that tolerated my insanity), my Big Bang artist cinthmp (whose cover is featured, and whose other works can be found in a link on my profile), and my beautiful betas, AutumnCadenza and Stately Demented (because, without you guys, this fic would've never turned out as awesome as it did~). Oh, and I should probably mention that **this isn't going to have a happy ending**, so if you're looking for something with a happy ending then you'd better click that back button now._

_Otherwise, though, I should mention that this fic will have profanities, violence/gore and a, uh, romantic scene... hence its M rating.  
I'll be uploading this every 2-3 days, depending on how bothered I am in terms of scanning it for any improvements I can make.  
I don't own Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan (which is Hajime Isayama's) or this story's inspiration, the Heisei Project (which is zips').  
...And that's all, I think~_

_Beta'd by AutumnCadenza and Stately Demented_

* * *

**~ Chapter One : Beginning ~**

* * *

_Every single history textbook has taught the same things about the past world – how there was abounding misery because people rebelled against the government and how, as a result, many had fallen to the curses brought by people's disobedience – but it was hard to believe in such a far-removed time. The thought of human-eating monsters ranging from 3 metres to 60 metres tall was utterly ludicrous in a world where the largest animals were the tame zoo beasts that spent their days lounging in cages for the delight of all human beings, and the thought of these monsters terrorizing humanity was even more preposterous. How could these small things ever hope to destroy the various buildings that stretched hundreds of metres into the air and defeat the government, with their advanced technology and their unlimited arsenal?_

_So, just like how people would scoff at the thought of titans for being untrue and unrealistic, so too did everyone laugh at the mere notion of being sad. Because, after all, it was hard to believe in something as ludicrous as pessimism in a world where laughter and smiles were the norm, and any sign of the mysterious thing known as 'depression' would be silenced without a trace…_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The sirens echoed in the apartment block and, no matter how loudly Eren talked to the police officer opposite him, its cacophonous scream reverberated through his buzzing ears and jarred what little functioned in his brain. There wasn't much that was currently working in there, thanks to the fact that his mind was submerged in the pleasant haze that only three bottles of beer at an ungodly hour of the morning could achieve. However, there was enough neurons firing in his brain to realize that the red liquid caking the interior of his neighbour's ajar door wasn't some sort of runny tomato sauce, as the policeman had laughingly informed him.

Yet even then, as his slippers slowly acquired the sickly-sweet stench of decay from the glistening floor, the policeman questioning him continued to smile jovially and converse casually with him. It was almost as if a dismembered corpse wasn't being carried out amidst the sound of vomiting bare metres away from them.

It was almost as if everything was... normal, somehow.

He didn't know whether it was because of the fact that this was the third death in his apartment block in just as many weeks or whether the wooziness of both cheap alcohol and sleeplessness had finally gotten to him, but the college student found his usual carefree grin slip momentarily from his face. His uncharacteristic lapse in happiness, which was an emotion that everyone supposedly felt at all times, didn't pass by the policeman unnoticed, and Eren found the other man's eyes narrowing slightly as he paused in whatever he was saying. Although he hadn't been listening to half of what the man had been saying to him, the drowsy young adult was ready to bet that he'd been carrying on about those compulsory counselling courses that he'd been forced to attend as of late.

Every time someone he remotely knew had been murdered in their vicinity, he'd have to go and see some smiling person that seemed to think the world of his pain. If it wasn't antidepressant pills, it was an avalanche of questions that never bothered to correlate with each other or a scrutinizing gaze that would stare deeply into his soul whenever he talked. It was infuriating, really.

It wasn't as if he could do anything about it, though.

"Is there something wrong, Mr Jaeger?" the man questioned pleasantly and, though the smile on his face gave him the very picture of geniality, Eren still felt a shiver vibrate down his spine.

"I'm perfectly fine," he replied with a fixed smile, but the policeman seemed anything but convinced.

"Mr Jaeger—"

"I'm fine, really!"

The policeman eyed him dubiously in the short stretch of silence that followed his forceful assertion. However, as the green-eyed youth insisted upon his perfectly happy mental state with a brighter smile on his face and, though his raised eyebrow was indicative of his lingering suspicion, the man chose not to press upon the issue any further.

"In that case…" the policeman muttered dubiously as his grin dimmed down a little, before his eyes lit up and he launched straight back into the meaningless waffle that he had been spewing since the perfunctory questions, had been exhausted a few minutes ago.

Eren found his mind drifting off again, and didn't bother to awake himself from his mental stupor until the other man had finally left him alone with a final hesitant smile and a nervous glance in the direction of his glazed eyes.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Later on, when the sirens had faded into the distance and the adjacent apartment had been scrubbed clean, Eren would not remember flinging his ruined slippers towards the wall or recall the exact nature of the putrid reddish-brown stain that he would find on the once-white paint. He would remember nothing of the bitter taste of government-regulation beer ('For Livening Up Parties! Only 3% Alcohol!' the gaudy label would announce from its position on the plastic bottle) as it burned its way down his throat, nor would he recall the mixture of bile and beer he'd hurl into the bushes beneath his balcony. It was a ritual of his Sunday nights because there was nothing better to do for him other than drinking his lonely weekends into a stupor of oblivion… unless, of course, he wanted to mingle with the masses.

The majority of the citizens would either be singing choir songs in the city square or attending the weekly fireworks displays that the government splurged on at this time. As much as it amused him to get a scratchy throat or a cricked neck, though, a fuzzy mind was probably the least of all those evils.

So, just like every other night, he tipped the contents of plastic bottle after plastic bottle down his sore throat and smiled dreamily at the increasingly fuzzy thoughts that clouded his mind and brought it to sleep. He would later wake up, confused as to why there was a damp patch on his pillow that corresponded exactly with his eye level, and wonder at the peculiar itchy dryness that would persist in his moisture-deprived eyes for the entirety of the next day, but he would remember almost nothing apart from that.

The only things that would indicate the unfortunate events of the early morning would be the crushed plastic bottle lying next to the eerily silent apartment beside his own…

…and the cold chill that settled in the pit of his stomach and refused to budge, no matter how much hot coffee he tried to drown it in.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"Eren, did you hear about the murder at your apartment last night?"

A pair of glazed green eyes lifted up to the curious blue ones directly in front of him before he blinked once and uttered an intelligent-sounding, "Huh?"

"To think that you'd only witness three murders in a month…" his best friend, Armin, mused thoughtfully as they hurried down the corridor to their first lecture for the day. "I think that must be a record low for you, huh?"

It was probably a bit odd for any eavesdroppers to hear Armin's comments, but the fact that Eren Jaeger was a literal magnet for murders couldn't easily been dismissed. After all, he'd been within a hundred metres of at least four unexplained deaths in the fortnight before he'd moved to his current residence… and that had been a good fortnight for him.

Eren watched with a mild air of amusement as the pensive smile on his friend's face morphed into an excited grin that invariably came when he lost himself in his statistic-centred ranting, before he shifted his gaze to his foster sister. Although Mikasa was more reserved than both he and Armin when it came to expressing any sort of emotion, which was a sore point for her in a world where open emotions were the status quo, there was a distinctively mirthful glint in her dark eyes as she observed her ranting blond friend. There were times when people would give his childhood companions odd glances, especially since his foster sister's infrequent replies almost made her seem gloomy in comparison to the excitement that his best friend often showed, but—

"Eren?"

The soft question broke through his musing and Eren was surprised to find that Mikasa and Armin were staring oddly at him from where they were standing about three feet away. He hadn't noticed when his feet had simply stopped placing themselves one after the other or when the usual cheeky grin on his face had disappeared, but he found himself hurriedly reassembling his facial expression when other people began to glance at him strangely as well.

"Eren, what's wrong?" Mikasa quietly repeated when he'd caught up and they'd resumed walking again, and the college student found his heart clench imperceptibly as Armin finally paused in his rambling to direct a curious gaze in his direction.

"It's nothing," Eren replied lightly, as he fought the unsettlingly unexpected urge to grit his teeth. "You know, we're going to be late if we don't hurry, and I have a feeling that Professor Hange won't be pleased if we're late again."

Once again, the brunette found himself on the receiving end of badly-hidden suspicion as two pairs of eyes bored holes into his skull. However, before he could do anything other than return their level stares with his own even gaze, he found an arm sling itself casually around his shoulders.

"So… what are you talking about?" a snobbish voice asked, and Eren couldn't have been more grateful for the interruption that came from his current saviour's mouth.

Unfortunately, his gratefulness dissipated into thin air as soon as he'd laid eyes on the two-toned hair that belonged to none other than his best friend's stuck-up neighbour.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

When Eren had finally been convinced – or, to be more precise, forced – off Jean's laughing form, the two men were sprouting the most colourful bruises and malicious smiles that the straggling spectators had ever seen in their lives, yet nobody whipped out a phone to alert the authorities to their disturbance. The days when Eren's and Jean's 'friendly' greetings became a little more than overly-hard slaps on the back were almost commonplace now, though there were still a minority that would gape at the proud badges of 'mock-war' that each wore on their faces. However, after a curious few had been duly persuaded to go back to their own business by the cold glint in Mikasa's black eyes, the green-eyed male found himself facing the varying smiles from his friends' (and enemy's) faces.

"Why do you always have violent tickling fights with Jean?" Armin sighed heavily, even as a slight hint of amusement crept unbidden into his voice.

"What I'd like to know, though," Eren started neutrally, "is why Horseface there always comes to touch me when I specifically tell him not to…"

"Ah, well," Jean's snarky voice sang out, "as amusing as it is to be assaulted by Your Royal Highness, I can't remember which of my acquaintances are stuck-up bitches–"

"That's enough, you two." Although the faint smile hadn't left Mikasa's face, both Eren and Jean found themselves paling and taking a step back from the black-haired girl.

However, before any of them could move a muscle, a rather loud voice assaulted the quartet in the otherwise empty hallway.

"Oho, is that Eren I see?! Don't tell me you got into another friendly scuffle with Jean, or you'll have to put restraining orders on each other!"

Eren paled still further and attempted to run away from the blurry figure that was flying towards him. Unfortunately for him, and much to the varying levels of amusement from the three other college students watching, Eren was duly bowled over and flattened by his hyperactive lecturer, who also happened to be one of the most eccentric professors in the college.

"P-Please get off me, Professor Hange…" Eren weakly mumbled from his face-down position on the floor, amidst Jean's obvious snorts of laughter and Armin's poorly-hidden chuckles.

"No can do, Eren!" the enthusiastic lecturer announced happily, before they yanked the youth to his feet and began to drag him over to a nearby lecture hall. "If I let you go, you'll probably march in half an hour later or not come at all, especially since Jean's here~"

In the face of such ruthless determination and overall weirdness, all Eren could do was grit his teeth in a mockery of a smile at Jean's guffawing figure and cast an apologetic glance in Mikasa's and Armin's general direction. When the boy and his lecturer finally made their way into the lecture hall, the trio gradually composed themselves and wandered off to their respective lectures, eager to get over the morning's excitement and apply themselves to some form of learning.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Criminology was usually one of Eren's favourite subjects, especially when his professors decided to allow everyone to go crazy on debating certain behavioural traits.

However, all the boy could think about was the headache that had snuck up on him, thanks to the fact that everyone was rather loudly shouting back and forth in the lecture hall.

It had started up surreptitiously as a low buzz that he had felt in the back of his mind but, much to his annoyance, the discomfort had gradually increased with time, just like his unease from the morning's events had as well. For some odd reason, not even Hange's cheery insults or his fellow students' verbal prodding could rouse him from his groggy stupor.

"Eren, you lazy bastard!" one of the people further down called out loudly, "Stop sleeping on your arm and get your ass over here, unless you're really just filled with hot air!"

A frown marred the brown-haired boy's face when he finally matched the snarky voice to a rather familiar face ─ it'd slipped his mind that Jean had attended his lectures, just like every other relevant thought had ─ but he made no move to lift his head up and fling back a retort, as he would normally do. The energy had somehow deserted him, though he couldn't really understand why it'd left him or where it'd disappeared off to; however, Eren wanted to think that the culprit was the suspicious green growth that he'd accidentally bitten into when he'd been eating his week-old bread.

It was only when someone came to shake his shoulder that he flung his head up with a growl and fought to see through the sudden dizziness that had come with his abrupt motion.

"What the hell—" he started huffily, before he nearly cut his tongue off when he noticed the amount of people that had crowded around him without his knowledge.

"…Dude, we've been calling your name for the past 10 minutes," Jean offered as an explanation, even as Professor Hange ambled over to see what was going on as well, "and you've just been lying there like some sort of corpse."

The college student's green eyes clouded over at the other's pitying tone and the rather morbid analogy that he'd used, but he felt a shiver crawl up his spine as his gaze roved over the vague curiosity on everyone else's faces. For a moment, he had almost thought that he was in a gallery surrounded by sneering figures as a needle sunk inexorably into his arm…but the strange mental image dissipated as quickly as it had come.

Instead, Eren was left with a vague unease and a slightly deafened ear, thanks to the enthusiastic lecturer perched beside him.

"Eren~!" Hange's voice sounded in his ear again, just as a rather adventurous hand dug itself into his hair and ruffled it rather vigorously. "Earth to Eren!"

"Eren, are you even listening to me anymore?"

"Come on, Eren, snap out of it!"

"Eren… _Eren_… EREN…"

**"Dammit, shut **_**up**_** already!"**

The loud and pained cry caught everyone by surprise, but what really made everyone reel from the angered boy…

…was the sheer darkness blanking out Eren's dilated pupils.

However, before anyone could do anything more than blink in shock, he stood up and shouldered past everyone. As they scrambled back from the scowling male and eyed him with something other than automatic placidity, he wrenched the door to the lecture hall open and slammed it shut behind him with a deafening thud. In the silence that followed his abrupt exit from the hall, the only sounds that anyone could hear were erratic breaths and even more erratic heartbeats.

And, by the time people realized that he wasn't going to come back, Eren was already halfway home.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The odd stares that Eren received as he stormed towards his apartment block were the least of his concerns, though, the same could not be said for his current state of mind. The roiling emotions struggling to break free from his heart confused the college student more than any of Armin's overly complex maths problems ─ which were one of the few things that he'd never be able to understand, as far as he was concerned ─ and his confusion only added to the odd feeling that threatened to overwhelm him in its wake.

He couldn't comprehend why his urge to physically mutilate something was growing with every step that he took or where his sudden violent tendencies were coming from, but Eren was smart enough to realize that what he was currently experiencing wasn't something that couldn't really be considered 'normal'. From what he knew about his present behavioural tendencies, his existing urges towards uncharacteristic actions could either be attributed to some sort of suppressed psychological trauma or was a manifestation of his non-conformist ideas, but neither explanation suited his situation at all.

His childhood had been as normal as anyone else's, from what little he knew of it, and the mere thought of rebelling against the government frightened him enough to momentarily stop him in his tracks. There wasn't anything particularly contrary that was lurking in his mind, as far as he knew.

…So what exactly was the reason for his contrary behaviour?

Eren growled and gave into his vicious urges when he reached the elevator in his apartment complex as he raised a tightly clenched fist and threw a savage punch at the unoffending 'up' button. It took him a few seconds of staring at the sparking indent to realize that he'd irrevocably broken the device and that he would have to take the stairs if he wanted to get back to his apartment before tomorrow came around, but all he could feel was a slight sense of satisfaction at breaking something. He had always been told, from a very young age, that violent and antisocial behaviour was unacceptable in a society that promoted happiness and peace, so why did he feel so good?

Why was something that was so fundamentally wrong feel so right all of a sudden?

The growl that issued out of his clenched jaw reverberated in the abandoned stairwell as he jogged up the stairs, but it was swallowed up by the explosive slam of the door when he stumbled onto his floor's corridor. He was so immersed in his feverish utterances that he didn't notice the man that was in the process of lifting his hand to his door… until he crashed into him and fell to the floor in a daze.

"What the hell?" the shorter man growled as he steadied the covered plate in his hand, but Eren was too stunned to do anything other than gape at the glaring person. "What sort of brat goes around bashing into other people anyway?"

When Eren didn't give an answer, the man frowned slightly at him, before he offered a hand to the other and wordlessly helped him up. However, when he was done, the unknown person huffed under his breath and muttered a few muffled curses, the likes of which Eren had never heard before.

"W-Who are you?" Eren asked, when his mouth finally decided to obey him, "And why are you in front of my door?"

"Ah, so that's who you are…" the man seemed to mumble, before he extended one gloved hand to Eren and smiled the most awkward smile he'd ever seen in his life.

"I'm your new neighbour, and I was just going to introduce myself to you… well, until you crashed into me just then."

* * *

**_A/N: _**_Reviews aren't mandatory, but they'd certainly be appreciated~_


	2. Encountering

_**A/N: **Watch out for profanities and some violence; Levi's mouth needs to be introduced to mouthwash, and Eren's got some issues...  
I should also mention that this world is a little different to the one that the SnK cast normally live in, along with the one that we inhabit. Picture a somewhat futuristic place like that in the Heisei Project, where peace seemingly abounds but where murders and other crimes run rampant (and, sadly, where the emotions felt by the victims/bystanders of such crimes are rarely, if ever, dealt with or consoled properly). Since that's out of the way, I now present the second chapter in this story~_

_Beta'd by AutumnCadenza and Stately Demented_

* * *

**~ Chapter Two [Encountering] ~**

* * *

The two men sat in their opposing seats and stared at each other, as thoughtful grey eyes bored into fidgety green ones. Between them sat two steaming mugs ─some sort of green tea for the man and plain coffee for Eren─ but neither were touched by their respective drinkers. If anything, the only indication of their existence was the opaque cloud of steam that hovered between their tenuously connected gazes and the faint aroma that they emitted into the air.

When Eren had rushed home from his lecture and opted out on his full day of studying, his original intention had been to sit in his apartment and lose himself in the cracks running through his home's old walls. Instead, he had come home to a stranger knocking upon his door and muttering the odd profanity under his breath, and he had been obliged to show the man indoors, because he happened to be his new neighbour. Actually, now that he thought about the situation a little more…

"When did you move here?" Eren asked pleasantly, yet the suspicion he had tried to hide from his new neighbour crept out unbidden through his deceptively simple question.

"I just got here an hour or more ago, brat," the man responded just as pleasantly, though the slight crease in between his eyebrows spoke of the irritation rankling at his innards. "I've been waiting for a damn replacement ever since my old one found itself squashed by some stupid wrecking ball…"

"I'm not a brat, dammit…and you do realize that the former owner of your apartment was murdered in there a few hours ago, right?" Eren cautiously questioned, but the derisive snort that same from the person opposite him rendered his caution to be absolutely ineffective.

"Didn't you understand me when I said that I'd been waiting for a damn replacement for fucking ages now, brat?" his new neighbour huffed indignantly, before he added as an afterthought, "I've got no intention of moving just because you want to mourn for whomever the hell used to live there, so go and complain to someone that actually cares for a change."

"I'm not complaining, and my name's Eren, not brat!" the college student abruptly blurted, but the other man hadn't really been startled by his explosive denial.

"Well, whatever floats your boat, Eren…" he muttered under his breath, but he immediately covered up his discontent with a nod towards the covered plate he'd brought inside with him. "But before I take on the role of your damn therapist or whatever they make you talk to these days, do you want to eat the food before it decomposes, or would you rather eat mould instead?"

The indignant huff that Eren tried to hide didn't go unnoticed by the other man, if the slight smirk dancing along the edges of his lips was any indication of that… so, in a bid to cover up his annoyance, Eren reached for the flimsy cloth and threw it off in a jerky movement. As the man cursed at his crumpled cloth and bent down to straighten the fabric out and fold it neatly by his side, the college student found himself salivating at the aroma that had wafted into his nose. If the man had looked up from his fastidious folding and caught a glimpse of the boy opposite him at that exact moment in time, he might've wondered whether the other had been fed in the past century or not.

In any case, when he did finally look up, Eren was still immersed in his hungered paroxysm.

"What, you've never seen macaroons before in your life?" the man snapped irritably, before Eren's confused look registered in his mind. "My god, you must be fucking deprived…"

Although his neighbour refrained from making other smart comments about him after that, Eren refused to make any sort of eye contact with his guest as he dug into the baked goods lying before him on the platter. The first few bites nearly made his eyes roll to the back of his head from the sheer pleasure it gave to his tastebuds but, by the time he was done acclimatising to the sweet flavour of the macaroons, he found his gaze continuously wandering back to the man… who had most probably baked them in some bid to impress his new neighbour.

He supposed he was lucky to get this man as his neighbour then, even if he was a little snarky around the edges.

Upon closer perusal, though, Eren noticed that this man had the strangest pair of silver eyes that he had ever seen on any other person. Of course, he hadn't seen many light-coloured eyes in his life, especially since everyone he knew usually had black or brown pupils, but that didn't detract from the man in any way. The clarity in his heavy gaze, whenever he had directed it in exasperation at his being, had merely accentuated the light that danced within his pupils, and his long lashes did nothing to detract from their sheen either. If he had smiled or even smirked, Eren guessed that those eyes would brighten up even more than they already were—

"Oi, kid," the man dryly snapped, and his harsh tone forcefully tugged the college student from his entranced reverie, "take a picture, why don't you? It'll last a damn sight longer and it won't drill a hole in my head while you're at it."

The brown-haired youth nervously gulped down his mouthful of macaroon as a blush flared across his cheeks. "I-I didn't mean to stare—"

"Relax already. Besides, I don't give a shit anyway," the other man said, before he fastidiously wiped at the crumbs scattered across his fingers and cast a dead look at the empty platter in front of him. "But unless you plan to stare some more at my apartment, you'll just have to wait until next time."

"Why… wait, where do you need to go?" Eren enquired through the abrupt and discomforting blur that threatened to overwhelm his vision.

"I have to unpack, obviously, and scrub the entire apartment clean before I go to sleep," his guest replied in a matter-of-factly tone, even as he collected up his plate and rose to his feet, "because the shitty police wouldn't have cleaned up the god-awful mess that that fucking corpse left behind. Those bastards never clean up after themselves."

Before Eren could hope to chew through his last bite of the pastry or get up from his position from his sofa, the man had noiselessly opened his front door and was already halfway out. However, before he shut the door behind him, he cast a final look back at the furiously chewing student and frowned slightly.

"Kids these days…" he grumbled under his breath, and shut the door in Eren's startled face.

The only indication of his presence was the lingering smell of the man's cold green tea and his homemade macaroons, and the cursive 'Levi' that was stuck onto the youth's front door.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The sticky-note that sat before Eren on his coffee table taunted him with the singular word that the college student could make neither head nor tail of, so the boy opted to let his green eyes roam over the mess that now littered the rest of his unfortunate piece of furniture instead. A light layer of dust, which was only broken by the circular indents that had been made by his used mugs and the platter, lay before him on the table and was further accentuated by the odd macaroon crumb that was scattered across its surface. As his eyes roved everywhere around the table and avoided the pristine yellow paper that sat atop his coffee table, he sighed once more, before he got up to dust it.

Cleanliness was a habit that was advocated all throughout the city that Eren lived in, but the college student hardly cared for the large springtime festivities that accompanied his apartment's communal cleaning sessions. Rather than participate in the odd culture that seemed to be rampant amongst his neighbours and most other people in the city, he preferred to clean things when his sneezes became too frequent or when certain pieces of furniture had become oddly grey in colour. This had earnt him the occasional dirty look from one of his friends on the rare occasions that he'd invited them to his flat, along with overly bright smiles and hasty apologies from fleeing visitors, but Eren didn't mind having a lack of company at times.

At least it gave him the opportunity to deflect any curious people from making themselves far too comfortable in his home.

With that thought, his mind wandered back to the topic he had been so studiously avoiding, and the college student sighed anew as the odd silver eyes of his newest neighbour floated to the forefront of his mind. He had no idea as to why, of all the strange eye colours he had seen, he would choose to linger on this particular person's steely eyes, but Eren had long since given up on the illogical nature of his musing.

Instead, as thoughts chased each other around his head and a tell-tale sign of overthinking manifested itself in a throbbing headache that attempted to consume his mind, the boy continued to sweep his duster robotically across the coffee table, over and over again. He continued to swipe at it, even when his glazed mind tried to inform him of the fact that he could already see his reflection in it, and by the time he'd regained his mind he had almost rubbed the varnish off the poor thing.

He never stood a chance of seeing his neighbour observe him from outside his window, really, not even when he passed by it to tuck his duster in some forgotten corner of his apartment. His thoughts were simply too tumultuous to acknowledge the thoughtful gaze that lingered on his form for a few fleeting moments.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Doorbells were things that Eren had found just a touch irritating at times –they tended to herald the arrival of unwanted people or intrude into the relative quiet that often settled over his sweaty form as he exercised in his living room– and this was one of those ill-fated times. The young adult had just strapped on his boxing gloves in preparation for a round with his punching bag when the generic screech of an imminent intrusion rang throughout his apartment. Although he rolled his eyes at the unannounced visitor, he hastily unstrapped his gloves and padded to the front door as quickly as he could. Despite his dislike for visitors, he knew enough manners to realize that ignoring them would probably be discourteous on his part.

The light was steadily dimming outside as the evening smoothly faded into the relative darkness of the night, but Eren could still make out the glossy pitch of his sister's dark hair and her usual bright red scarf. As she entered his apartment with a slight nod of her head, he stepped outside to swing the door shut behind them and thought he'd caught sight of a flash of white in his periphery, but he dismissed the curiosity that had begun to rise in him when Mikasa called to him from within. After all, his foster sister was more important than a trick his mind might've played and, even though she was just a little too overprotective at times, she was still his family and more tangible than his thoughts.

Although it had been uncomfortable for Eren to live with his sister, he didn't mind her frequent visits as much as he'd minded her near-constant intrusion on his privacy, so there was rarely ever any ill will directed towards her when she dropped in. There were still times when Mikasa would ask if he'd wanted company in his empty rooms (and, if the truth was to be told, Eren wished she'd stop asking about his supposed loneliness) but today was, thankfully, not one of those times.

However, if he'd known the reason for her visit, he might've preferred her nagging over what she had to say to him.

"Eren," Mikasa started warmly, as her aforementioned brother took a seat next to her on the couch, "Are you okay? I heard from Jean that something happened earlier today…"

Eren's eyes darkened slightly as his mind flashed back to the pitying gaze that Jean had cast him as he'd surged out of his seat and barrelled through the lecture doors, but he softened his gaze when he faintly noted his foster sister's palpable worry. He had been stupid to think that the two-toned bastard wouldn't go and blab about his meltdown to Mikasa; after all, it was clear to everyone except his sister that Armin's irritating neighbour was completely infatuated with her. It would only be natural for him to tell her about his problem in class… though, of course, the fact did nothing to make him like the guy any more than he already did.

"Nothing's wrong, Mikasa," Eren sighed in response, but his foster sibling's worry continued to flow unchecked from her unnaturally still figure.

"It isn't 'nothing' when you miss the day's lectures, Eren," Mikasa murmured quietly, while her gaze became more worried by the second, "especially when you've been looking forward to that forensics one for the past week…"

He had honestly forgotten all about the in-class examination of well-known 'cold cases' –which were quite rare, if their ever-vigilant government was to be believed– but Mikasa's words had jogged his mind once more about the issue. As Eren groaned aloud and dropped his head into his hands at the missed opportunity, the college student heard his foster sister breathe a sigh that sounded just a little bit ragged to his ears.

"See what I mean?" his sister pressed on, much to Eren's burgeoning chagrin. "Normally, you'd be talking over Armin's rants about some random cold case and some other alleged criminal, but you've been awfully quiet today. It's not like you to forget these things, Eren."

"Well, I'm sorry for forgetting, Mikasa!" The snappy retort that leapt out of his mouth and through his intertwined hands sounded foreign and distant, even to himself, but the long silence that followed his words was even less comforting to his ears.

"There's no need to act like that." A rustle of fabric alerted him to unexpected movement and, startled out of his position, Eren raised his head with a rapid motion that nearly caused his neck to crack in protest. "If you really don't want to talk about it then you could've just said so."

"Mikasa…" Eren started contritely, but his foster sister merely fixed him with a hard look that nearly made him cower in his hunched position.

"Save it, Eren," Mikasa said in a tone that Eren could only describe as uncharacteristically cold. "You might as well go see the correctional counsellor tomorrow morning if you're that wound up; they might be able to talk more sense into you more than I can right now."

She arrested his sudden attempt to get off the couch and open the door in her stead with a slightly empty smile, before she wrapped her thick scarf around her lower face and disappeared outside into the relative gloom of the night. Her footsteps faded as she quickly strode away from his apartment and began to make her way back to her own lodgings, which was a rather substantial distance from where he lived.

On most normal days, he would've offered to walk her home or even make a conscious effort to visit her home, but the topic of visiting her shared apartment might bring his own loneliness into question, along with even more nagging on her part. There was a reason why he'd moved away from his foster sister's extreme concern for him, after all… but even then, a small corner of his mind berated him for allowing Mikasa to walk back alone.

However, by the time he had resolved to catch up to her and offer to walk her home, he could already see her long scarf trailing in the wind as she walked down his street, alone and unattended.

So all he could do, really, was watch her go while he rained curses down onto his head.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A lone car inched cautiously down the street and past the floor's communal balcony as it made its way into the depths of the city, and Eren watched it go from where he'd been standing with a listless gaze that clouded his green eyes and made them look almost grey in the dim light of the night. The slightly biting wind stung at his face and his pale fingers began to protest loudly at the chill outside, yet he continued to stay just shy of his apartment's back door. Although it was quite cold in his unsheltered balcony, his apartment's heating system had been closer to a freezer these days and, though it would've been nice to curl up in bed, it was too early for him to sleep.

Besides, his barely broken-in mattress was still a little lumpy and uncomfortable for sitting on.

However, the peace of the night was short lived for Eren; within moments of the car's departure from the streets below, a harsh rattling from someplace to his left caused the college student to whip his head around. Although the abrupt rigidity that he got in his shoulders subsided minutely when green eyes alighted upon familiar grey ones, he only spared Levi a momentary glance before he returned his attention to the dark clouds disfiguring the calm of the sky.

"The fucking heating isn't working inside for you either, is it?" Levi started rather abruptly, and Eren nearly bit his tongue clean off when he choked on a surprised bark of laughter. "I didn't expect anything less of the cheap-ass flat, but an old man can hope a little…"

The man cast his silver eyes down to his beverage –which, much to Eren's surprise, seemed to be housed in some sort of teacup– and took a delicate sip of the drink inside, before he sighed in contentment and cast his gaze over the young adult once more. Unfortunately, the sense of slight amusement that he'd gotten from observing the sky quickly dissipated with the vapour that wafted from the cup when Levi broke the tenuous silence that hung around their lonely forms.

"You sounded pretty pissed when that woman visited you this afternoon…" Levi mused thoughtfully, and this time Eren allowed himself to grind his teeth together rather viciously.

"Who goes around spying on other people in this day and age?" Eren blurted out before he could help himself, but the man beside him seemed to be more amused than annoyed by his unexpected outburst.

"The walls are surprisingly thin in places, brat," the man snorted, as he flicked a dismissive hand towards the thin partition separating their apartments and not their balconies, "you'd be surprised as to what people can hear through them…"

Eren's face was probably registering the exact emotion that was currently dashing his mind asunder, because Levi forewent sipping from his teacup to continue talking. "I didn't hear anything important, if that's what you're worried about, so you can stop staring at me like I'm a fucking floater that you found swimming in your toilet bowl."

The odd mental image that the college student received as a result of his neighbour's words nearly made him both laugh and cringe at the same time, but the inclination to do either disappeared as soon as he felt something warm alight on his hands. It took a while of fingering the soft fabric atop his palms and a great deal of squinting in the dim light to figure out that the thing currently warming his hands appeared to be a pair of gloves… which, if his memory served him right, had been fit rather snugly around Levi's hands the last time he'd seen them.

"What…" Eren started dumbly, as his gaze flickered from the gloves around his hands to Levi's quiet figure, but he was stopped from saying anything else when the elder man turned to re-enter his flat.

"You just looked fucking cold, Eren, so I thought you'd have a better use for them than I would…" Levi said in a low tone that Eren nearly didn't hear, before he added a little louder, "But really, don't stay up for so damn long and get inside before your ass freezes, otherwise it'll be hard for you to take a shit tomorrow."

And, with that charming parting comment, Eren found himself alone on the communal balcony once more.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

He didn't know whether it was because of the gloves wrapped snugly around his hands or the slightly unconventional care that his neighbour had shown him just before he'd left, but Eren found his eyes crinkling upwards ever so slightly. The foreign feeling continued to stay with him, even as he returned his gaze to the drifting clouds in the darkened sky, and the skin around his eyes and on his cheeks hurt when he'd finally given up on smiling like an idiot.

So, when he eventually went off to bed and discarded the petty thoughts in his mind, the only thing he could really focus on was the warmth racing from his fingers to the rest of his body…

…And the faint happiness that was radiating from his heart for the first time during his horrible day.


	3. Changing

_**A/N: **I'm amazed at the amount of people that seem to like this fic; it makes me feel somewhat bad for ending it how I originally do, though it's not enough to convince me to make the ending any happier. In any case, though, I should mention that I don't know where the chapter titles come from- I had nicer ones before, but I completely forgot what they were. It's probably why they're all going to be one-word affairs with the '-ing' suffix, or something like that..._

_Beta'd by AutumnCadenza and Stately Demented_

* * *

**~ Chapter 3 [Changing] ~**

* * *

Eren's morning generally began when a stubborn streak of sunlight intruded through his thin blinds and fell upon his eyes… but today started a little differently, thanks to the fact that he was already awake before the sun had been up in the sky for more than an hour. The source of his unwarranted start to the day, though, wasn't particularly evident to the groggy young adult until he had groaned aloud and rolled over to his other side. Yet even then, when he'd finally settled down, it still took another disturbance to force his sleep-glued eyes open.

"Oi, brat," the strangely familiar voice growled in displeasure, and Eren nearly pissed his pants when his pupils alighted upon a shadowed figure crouching at the edge of his mattress.

"W-Wha…" Eren whimpered pathetically, but the sight of cold grey eyes before his own effectively killed the question bubbling to the forefront of his mind.

"Your balcony door was unlocked, you little shit," Levi snorted derisively as he recalled the moment when he'd knocked on the flimsy screen and found it rattling open under his touch, before he returned his attention to the half-awake kid before him. "But I didn't come here to have a civil chat with you over your debatable level of stupidity, brat."

Eren stared darkly at the shadowy figure crouched before his bed but, if the other man noticed his palpable displeasure, he didn't seem to pay any attention to it. "Now, I'm not sure whether your bathroom's heating works or not… but mine isn't working, and I need to wash my body before my sweat fucking dries on me."

The tired college student groaned loudly at the thought of being further disturbed by the inevitable noisiness of his neighbour's shower, but the hard glare that attempted to bore a hole into his skull prevented him from simply ignoring the disturbance to his less-than-peachy day. With a displeased sigh and an even more disgruntled growl, Eren flung his covers off his body and wriggled out of bed, before he noiselessly waved in the general direction of his shower and shuffled over towards his kitchen.

If he couldn't get any more sleep, then he might as well try to make sure that he could keep himself functioning without the extra half-hour of sleep that he'd normally get.

By the time Eren had managed to get the kettle to boil without electrocuting himself or burning his hand on the heated plastic, his unwelcome guest had already made himself comfortable at his dining table, complete with half-dried hair and stupidly fluffy towel. As the groggy young adult pointedly ignored the glaring eyesore that was Levi's impossibly white towel (what sort of moron would have a towel that was that clean anyway?), he gratefully collapsed into his seat and sipped at his heavily decaffeinated drink.

"That thing is pretty much liquid shit," Levi derisively huffed midway through Eren's second sip, much to his great displeasure. "You'd be better off drinking something like tea if you really want to get a hearty punch in the face. Heck, even diluted tea has more caffeine than the pasty brown crap that you're downing right now."

"How could tea have more caffeine than coffee when nothing has more than 5% caffeine to begin with?" Eren rapidly fired back, while his unoccupied hand pointed to the gaudy label sprawled over his coffee tin. "And besides, your tea can't possibly taste much better than this 'pasty brown crap', no matter how much you add artificial colourings and flavours to it."

He almost considered retracting his statement and bowing down to beg for his neighbour's pardon when a furious pair of stormy grey eyes glared daggers at him, but he was spared the enactment of his humiliating thought when Levi abruptly leapt out of his seat and left his apartment, stupidly fluffy white towel and all. However, before he could question where the shorter man had gone, a bag of tea was unceremoniously shoved into his face, which nearly made him topple back in his seat and abandon his hold on his steaming mug altogether.

"Drink this," Levi growled dangerously, but when Eren continued to stare vacantly between the tea-bag and his face, he pressed its paper sides into Eren's cheeks and hissed insistently. "Now."

"But I'd rather just drink my coffee!" Eren whined in stubborn annoyance, and he almost stomped his foot to try and impress his point upon his disinterested neighbour. "For goodness' sakes, why don't you go convert some other discontented soul to your tea? And besides—"

"Eren, that wasn't a suggestion," Levi hissed coldly, before he shoved the tea back into Eren's face and nearly spilt a good portion of it onto his skin "Drink it. Now. Or do you not understand what I'm saying, brat?"

Shocked by the other's curious display of anger in regards to his tea and the fervent light shining brightly in his piercing gaze, Eren had no choice but to follow the other's directive and abandon his coffee to the coolness of the table-top. By the time the tea had finished brewing on his stove and steeping in another mug, though, Levi had taken the opportunity to grasp his mug and dispose of its offensive contents into the nearby sink.

Unfortunately for Eren, though, the hard look in the shorter man's eyes was enough to quash the vehement protest that was attempting to claw its way out of the college student's throat.

The curiously negative vibes continued to emit from Levi as Eren cautiously cradled his mug and sat down at his dining table, but all thoughts about his neighbour's atypical array of emotions fled from his mind when his tongue came into contact with the steaming tea… and its incredible flavour. The explosion of wild herbs that ignited his taste buds brought such a wonderful elation to his senses that, for just a moment, he almost imagined that he could see the gates of heaven, but the odd sight died down as soon as he had swallowed his mouthful. However, before he could throw back the rest of his tea and savour its soothing warmth carving a path through his gullet, the college student was interrupted by a light snicker to his right.

Levi's presence had been at the very back of Eren's mind as soon as he'd lost himself in the heavenly infusion that his neighbour had kindly gifted him with but, thanks to the older male's amused noises, he remembered the other's unwanted company again. When he'd finally set down his warm cup and had turned around with the intention of rooting the man out of his apartment, he was stopped short by the curious expression on his pale face.

Because, instead of his usual sardonic smirk or annoyed frown, Levi had a genuine smile on his face…

…And, no matter how hard he tried to explain to his neighbour that he wasn't going to be shitting in his pants or dying from a fever anytime soon, he couldn't quite explain away his heavy blush to the other male sitting in front of him.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"Eren… Eren, are you even paying attention to me?"

Armin's hand entered the aforementioned male's field of vision with a blurred hand that snapped Eren out of his daydream almost instantaneously, but it took a few seconds for his dull green eyes to stray towards his friend's blue ones, which were swimming with a mixture of exasperation and worry. However, when his attention was somewhat more focused on his friend again, Eren almost wished he hadn't; his dazed state had barely registered the concern laced through Armin's words, but his semi-alert state found it difficult to not get overwhelmed by the other's emotions.

"Your eyes are finally turned towards me," Armin noted good-naturedly, but his tone became a little more firm when Eren's eyes began to glaze over once more. "But seriously, Eren, what's wrong with you today?"

"Wha… What do you mean?" Eren mumbled, in the hopes that his friend would miraculously ignore his attempts at feigning confusion, but he had no such luck on the matter.

"You know perfectly well what I mean!" Armin's eyes flashed dangerously as he hissed at his best friend, but his voice lost some of its intensity when the lecturer cast a rather pointed look in their direction. "You're always incredibly psyched for any of Professor Erwin's lectures, yet you're pretty much sleeping with your eyes open right now! What's gotten into you, Eren?"

"There's nothing wrong with me, okay?" Eren sighed in mild exasperation, but Armin's sharp gaze caught the resignation that was half-hidden in the other's dull green eyes. "I'd be perfectly fine if you just left me alone, so―"

"Bullshit."

Eren stared in surprise when Armin's normally gentle tone hardened with the mild profanity that slipped out of his mouth. For the most part, his angelic friend would frown or become upset whenever someone uttered language that was considered unacceptable (and ever so slightly laughable in comparison to Levi's rather colourful swearing), so the times that he used such words were even rarer than the likelihood of Professor Hange's chances of regaining her sanity.

As far as Eren was concerned, if there was anyone that would be considered the content poster-boy for being a happy conformist… then Armin was probably it.

Yet here he was, with a deep furrow creasing his blond brow, and Eren couldn't do anything but stare dumbly at the stern expression plastered across his friend's face.

"You were supposed to have a meeting with the correctional counsellor this morning, weren't you?" The sudden, guilty look that Eren made confirmed Armin's suspicions, and he continued to let his words tumble out of his mouth at an uncharacteristically rushed pace. "I'm sure you didn't go, if your face is anything to go by, so don't tell me that you're 'fine' when you missed out on vital treatment for your unease. You tend to have mood swings like nobody else I've ever seen before, but this is taking things to a whole new level, even for you."

Before Eren could hope to reply, Armin ploughed onwards. "Deaths happen a lot, I know that, and you've had more than your fair share these past few months, but you're not going to be able to deal with things better if you simply ignore your problems and continue to mope around. We've all got hope and light in ourselves, even during the darkest times, and the government's here to make sure that we're not susceptible to mental diseases like sadness or anything just as ludicrous. I know they're not your favourite sessions and sometimes, they say repetitive things that you've probably heard a thousand times before, but you have to go if you want to get better!"

Eren gnawed his bottom lip and was just about to fling a retort back to his best friend when a heavy hand dropped down onto his shoulder.

It was at this moment that he noticed the silence that had fallen over the lecture hall during Armin's latest spiel and the curious eyes that were focused on him for the second time in just as many days. However, as a shadow crossed over his face and threatened to make itself known, Professor Erwin made a timely intervention.

"Eren, Armin…" His serious gaze fell on the both of them and held their attention for a few moments, before he continued on speaking, "I know the series of deaths in Eren's apartment is fascinating, but it would probably be better for the two of you to discuss this when my lecture is over."

When Professor Erwin was sure that his two wayward students had understood his words, he lifted his hand off Eren's shoulder and proceeded to the front of the hall again, before he continued along with his prepared lecture for the remaining half-hour. Soon enough, everyone's gazes left Armin and Eren as their attention was captured once more by the statistics in front of the hall.

However, Armin's gaze never left Eren's face, even when the latter slipped back into his daydreams and resumed his passive attempts to shut out the world around him.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The first thing that he saw when he'd exited the lecture hall was Mikasa's tightly-pressed lips.

If he wanted to be more accurate, though, it might've been better to say that her barely lukewarm gaze was the first thing that alighted upon his being, but being pedantic had never quite been his forte. As far as he was concerned, everyone else in the world could be as picky as they wanted to be, so long as they kept him out of their borderline-OCD sights.

After all, according to someone that he couldn't recall anymore, 'you're not going to be able to live any longer anyway'.

His mental tangent had just begun to wander down the curious path of the unknown person he'd subconsciously quoted when a particularly pale hand clamped down on his shoulder. Although he didn't squeak from surprise, the surprised noise that escaped his lips was enough to make Mikasa's own twitch upwards for a split second, before they resumed their oddly serious line.

"Eren, what is the meaning of this?" When a phone entered his line of vision and the short text message that Armin had sent to his foster sister registered in his mind, it was hard not to let a groan slip out of his mouth.

He had expected Jean to tell Mikasa about everything that was going on in his life –he was, in rather childish terms, a tattle-tale after all– and her intuition was probably honed to the point that she would've known if he was feeling less than peachy… but Armin, of all people, had betrayed him to her motherly instincts. He didn't hate being fussed over, though it did get rather annoying when the one fussing over him was his overprotective foster sibling, but what he did hate was the breach in trust that his best friend (or former best friend, if he were to be more accurate) had made when he'd told his sister of the slight ruckus they'd caused in the lecture hall.

"It's nothing major, jeez," Eren grouched unamusedly as he shook off Mikasa's hand, which earnt him a few cautious stares from the slower people filing out of the emptying lecture hall that he promptly ignored. "Armin may or may not have tried to disturb my daydreaming and he may or may not have had an argument with me about visiting the correctional counsellor—"

"Did you _have_ to skip another session, Eren?" Mikasa sighed, but the half-suppressed smile on her face ruined the lightly scolding effect that she'd been going for. "You know how they try to bug me when you don't show up."

"And you know how _they_ like to bug _me_ when I don't answer their pointless questions." Instead of standing around and attracting more attention for his strange opposition towards counselling in general, Eren had decided that stuffing his hands into his pockets and talking while he slouched off to the cafeteria would be a better idea.

"Besides, people keep dying around me to begin with," Eren huffed in annoyance. "It's not like I can control where those dumb murderers kill and how they attempt to bring terror into the hearts of the people anyway. Don't they realize that spouting the same old 'get over it and be happy' mantra does nothing, especially after they've been repeating it for the past few years?"

The peculiar warning look that flashed across Mikasa's dark eyes was totally missed by the ranting college student, but the re-introduction of her hand to his shoulder received a little more attention than her subtle expressions. However, before she could get in a word edgewise, she found her hand dislodged again as Eren's head quickly whipped to the window on his right.

"Eren," Mikasa started in a bid to get his attention again, but she was completely rebuffed by Eren's continued fascination with the view outside the window. "Eren, what is it?"

It took a few more minutes of other similarly phrased questions and a few harsh pokes to his sides to get Eren's attention back on her, but all thoughts of chastising him died down in her when she saw the consternation drawn across his slightly furrowed brows. While Mikasa busied herself with smoothing out the disconcerting wrinkles that marred her foster brother's forehead, she tried to think up ways to get the strangely-silent boy to talk to her somehow.

"I thought I saw…" Eren bit his lower lip hesitantly as he wondered about whether he should tell his foster sister about the odd sight of his neighbour with what looked to Professor Hange, but the thought flew from his mind when she removed her finger from his brow and waved her hand before him instead. "Actually, never mind."

"What? What did you see?" she insisted, but he shook his head and shrugged diffidently.

"It was nothing important…" Eren muttered, both to himself and to Mikasa, and was summarily relieved when his foster sister decided to not pry into his affairs for the first time in her life. Of course, it didn't mean that he was spared the curious gaze that she deigned to throw his way… but at least he was able to keep his thoughts to himself for the time being.

That was, until he nearly bashed into a wall in a place that was most certainly not the cafeteria.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"For the last time, Mikasa, I'm not going to go see that counsellor—"

"And for the last time, Eren, I'm not going to leave your side until you go see them!"

Determined green clashed with stubborn grey as Eren stared at Mikasa and she stared straight back at him, but neither backed down from their impromptu staring contest in front of the counsellor's impeccably white door. The few odd glances that were directed to the flat expressions plastered onto their faces went by completely unnoticed, but the bored voice that sounded from next to them was rather effectively in grabbing their attention.

"You might burn a hole into each other's skulls if you continue staring like that." Eren's and Mikasa's heads whipped around so fast that they nearly smashed their foreheads together but, when their vision had cleared, their eyes simultaneously landed on Mikasa's room-mate, Annie. "That is, if the people around you don't burn you to the ground first…"

By the time the awkward smiles had dissipated on Eren's and Mikasa's faces and Annie had stopped looking far too amused for anyone's benefit, the unusual trio were the only people left standing uncomfortably before the counsellor's closed door. However, before either of the foster siblings could ask why the normally-taciturn girl was talking to them, she had already turned to focus her pale blue eyes on her roommate.

"Now, I'm not sure what's going on here…" Annie's eyes strayed to the counsellor's door and Eren's flushed face in a way that directly conflicted with her previous statement. "But Mikasa, you're going to be late to your next lecture if you keep hovering over Eren like that. I'm sure that, as much as Professor Nanaba is fine with you coming into the hall late again, you're better off not disturbing everyone else trying to learn inside."

For a moment, Eren thought that she'd put up some sort of fight and ignore Annie's words, but his eyes widened ever so slightly when Mikasa merely cast a glance in his direction and sighed before she obligingly went off to her next class. Before he could celebrate his good fortune and make a break for somewhere other than the correctional counsellor's room, though, a flat look from the girl beside him stopped him in his tracks.

"Mikasa's been more emotionless than ever since you kicked her out of your apartment and moved to your new one." Eren's eyes widened at Annie's words, but he could only stare at her in shock as she quickly continued speaking. "I'm not sure what's gotten her so riled up now, but it's most probably something to do with you again. Now, I'm not suggesting anything here…"

Eren gulped when Annie moved closer and pinned him against the wall, but the curious lack of emotion in her new few words served to frighten him even more. "But I have a feeling that you might want to do whatever's necessary for your sister to return to her old self.

"It's up to you as to whether you want to follow my advice, of course…" It took a while for Eren to realize that he wasn't being forced against the wall and that Annie had already began to walk down the corridor, but her last words rung in his ear as she disappeared around the corner. "But it's probably in Mikasa's best interest for you to go see that counsellor now."

Mikasa had been somebody that had never quite expressed emotions in the same way that most people in society often did but the thought that she had become more closed-off was particularly worrying, especially when Eren considered the social isolation that all morose-looking individuals suffered. She had struggled to integrate herself into her emotionally buoyant surroundings so that she could eliminate the ever-present risk of being severely 'corrected' by the government… so if he became the cause for her relapse into stoicism, he would probably never forgive himself for placing his foster sister in trouble.

As much as he didn't like her overly protective nature or her inherent nosiness when it came to his affairs, he'd rather have her than nobody at all.

He stared at the spot where he'd last seen Annie occupy for a long while as his thoughts raced around his head but, when the door beside him swung open with a merry tinkle and a pleasant voice asked whether he was alright or not, Eren shook his head and huffed to himself. It was infuriating for him to see the very people that made him recall the deaths that he'd tried so hard to suppress in his subconscious, but if this was for Mikasa…

…then he supposed he could spare a few minutes of his time for them.

And so, with a pleasant smile slapped onto his face for good measure, Eren turned towards the awaiting counsellor and walked into his unscheduled counselling session. Hopefully, if things didn't go too badly, he could get out within 10 minutes and catch the end of a mid-afternoon soapie, or something along the lines of that.


	4. Visiting

_**A/N: **If anyone can think of a more fitting title for this chapter, feel free to tell me about it... because I ran out of ideas. There are also quite a few more changes in this particular chapter than the other ones, simply because I disliked what I read from around the second section onwards, so hopefully those changes made the story somewhat better._

_Beta'd by AutumnCadenza and Stately Demented.  
secondary revisions have been left unbeta'd_

* * *

**~ Chapter Four [Visiting] ~**

* * *

Daylight was useful for a city mainly powered by solar panels and, for the most part, its residents were more than happy to spend any remnants of their free time under its accommodating warmth. If one were to go out on any given day during lunch hour, there would generally be a large amount of people situated in the dappled shade underneath the trees spread generously over the streets and an even larger amount of people simply milling around on the footpath as they chatted to strangers and friends alike. Cheery smiles would be exchanged, regardless of whether one knew the other or not, and the air was generally pleasant, as perpetually happy people often made it to be.

Sometimes, though, Eren wished that a storm would appear, just so people wouldn't see him when he angrily trudged back home from, say, a stupid counselling session.

He hadn't really expected much from the imbecilic counsellor, other than the usual condolences and a smattering of perfunctory queries, yet he had still been disappointed by the total lack of sympathy that the bright-looking man had bestowed upon him. It was quite true that the guy was a professional and, as such, should probably possess some sort of neutrality about his form… but the shallow cheeriness that he displayed was almost enough to make Eren barf. That, along with the clinical disdain in which he'd constantly looked down his nose at him, had been too unsettling for him to last more than halfway through his hour-long session.

Eren was used to the oddly empty feeling that tended to settle in the pit of his stomach every time he finished a session with the useless individuals that claimed to have the power to magic away his 'grief sickness', but the white-hot rage that blinded his vision was something else entirely. He'd stood up and barrelled out the door, amidst the half-troubled (and curiously half-resigned) protests that had flown out of the counsellor's mouth as soon as he'd made his hasty departure, and had no idea why he'd done it. Then, there had been a moment of inactivity that had wormed its way into his unusual bout of anger once he'd flown out the college gates and nearly fell into a pothole half-concealed by the imposing brick wall…

…but it had passed when the rage had flared up again inside of him.

Although societal standards continued to plague his fuzzy mind and he'd occasionally direct a tight-lipped smile that erred on the side of a grimace to any unfortunate pedestrian that caught his eye, the majority of his thoughts were occupied with the unsettling feeling unfurling inside of him. While he dished out half-arsed smiles to the genially confused, it was clear that he couldn't release his emotions upon the unsuspecting populace around him. While the people around him continued with their daily lives, his mind continued to spin as furiously as it had since he'd left the counsellor bare minutes ago and his emotions were, in very mild terms, a chaotic mess that he could make neither head nor tail of. For the first time in his life, Eren was mildly thankful for his passable (though somewhat poor) ability to put his body onto autopilot.

Mild discontent was something that he'd often find rankling at his soul at odd times in his life (such as when there wasn't enough cheese on his pizza or when the sports channel didn't have anything other than golf), but this level of ire was something that he couldn't consider as something normal. Heck, he didn't even know that he'd possessed _this_ much fury inside of him until the insensitive counsellor had pleasantly threatened him with the notion of anti-depressants after he'd refused to answer any more of the man's overly probing questions. Apparently, not talking about his problems equated to being saddled with a disease in the counsellor's eyes, and that thought didn't quite sit well with him. As if any emotion that wasn't happiness meant that he had some sort of disease.

Eren grit his teeth at his thoughts –not to the point that someone would see, but enough to release even a sliver of the tension boiling up inside of him– and almost walked head-first into the lamp-post in front of his apartment complex. The rather startling urge to shake his fist at the inanimate object and hurl a slew of profanities at anything and everything was getting stronger by the minute and, in a bid to escape making a fool of himself, he rushed into the building and flew up the stairs.

He would've preferred to take the elevator, but… well…

The annoyed college student felt an embarrassed-flush creep up his neck as he recalled punching in the elevator button the day before but, with a few jerks of his head and an angered growl, the memory floated peacefully to the back of his mind. As he mentally prepared the rest of his day in his mind and began to look forward to doing a few exercises with his punching-bag, Eren threw open the door that led to his floor…

…Only to find a column of rather thick black smoke billowing out from Levi's front door.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"I can't believe you blew up your stove…" Eren sniggered incredulously, even as he sipped at his caffeinated tea and quietly revelled in the welcome boost of energy that it gave him.

The man seated opposite him at the dining table threw him a rather filthy glare, but Eren was too busy smiling to himself to notice or care for his neighbour's palpable annoyance.

To say that he had been left speechless at the events following Levi's accident in his apartment was an understatement; if anything, Eren had been completely flabbergasted when he'd seen the guy throw himself out the apartment amidst the hellish smoke that issued from the maw of his front door. If he had been the poetic sort then he might've described his neighbour's emergence from the smoke as something akin to a firefighter emerging from a blazing inferno, thanks to the soot-stains caking his cheeks and the mild burns running down his forearms, but all he settled for was a whispered expletive.

It had seemed like that whisper wasn't enough to escape Levi's hearing though, if the intense stare that he'd received from the man mere second later was any indication of that fact. However, before he could do anything more than take a threatening step in Eren's direction, he had mercifully keeled over and slumped face-first to the floor.

When there was a person that was, for all intents and purposes, unconscious in front of a ruin that could potentially go up in flames, what was one supposed to do, other than call emergency services to deal with the problem and lug his unfortunate neighbour back to his apartment? Eren was ever so slightly inane in his actions at times and was one of the contented populace that tended to steer clear of any involvement with outside help, but even _he_ knew when to call someone else to do what he could not… though, of course, it didn't mean that he wanted to admit that fact aloud.

Calling the fire services hadn't been too much of a hassle, but dragging the semi-conscious body of his neighbour had proved to be a slight challenge. How someone that small was heavier than Armin and even Mikasa was beyond his comprehension –though, to be fair, it had been a while since he'd snuck behind his best friend or foster sister and attempted to carry them as a joke– but, luckily for him, he'd only had to drag the man to his front door, as Levi had obligingly stood up and carried himself over the threshold. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he'd tried to make his neighbour rest when he was sure Levi wasn't going to collapse on him at any given moment in time, Eren had only been tossed the occasional sigh and mild expletive…

…Until now, that was, thanks to Levi's rather reluctant explanation of the mess next door.

"I knew I should've just gotten takeout instead…" Levi angrily huffed, even as Eren continued to snort rather loudly into his tea. "But no, some shitty friend wanted to visit and I had wanted to bake for them, because I don't go around ordering pizzas day in and day out."

Levi continued to rant under his breath as Eren wondered why his neighbour seemed to know about his frequent purchases from the local pizzeria. "Now my damn apartment's gone and blown up on me because the gas hadn't been working and the idiot's going to laugh at me for my shit luck… Tch, of all days, it just had to be today…"

"Well, um, you could just bring your friend to my place for dinner!"

Eren hadn't meant to blurt out his half-baked thought –heck, he hadn't even realized that he would be this accommodating to a man that, frankly, riled him up almost as much as Jean would– and, judging from his neighbour's widened eyes, Levi didn't particularly expect his outburst either. However, before he could chicken out and do something to either deflect or apologize for his suggestion, the steely grey eyes staring at his narrowed thoughtfully for a few long moments.

"I suppose I don't really have a choice right now, since the restaurants around here probably source their produce from charnel houses or the sewers, but…" Eren quietly gulped as Levi's cold gaze bore into his eyes, before he heard his next words.

"I think we're going to have to fix a few things first."

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Eren's wardrobe was a little atypical for a young adult his age, if one wanted to put things mildly.

There was the odd splash of colour amidst the grey and black of his casual clothes and a rather staggering amount of hoodies and loose jeans. A sole outfit for formal occasions gathered dust in an abandoned corner, along with the usual bright shirts that most of the younger members of the populace wore. Half the clothes had probably not seen a washing machine in a week, while the other half had not seen one in their entire lifetime.

…So all in all, the disgust painted rather obviously across Levi's face was probably the right reaction to the monstrosity before him.

Most people who'd been privileged (or simply unfortunate) enough to witness the interior of Eren's wardrobe would often turn a little pale, close the doors and hurry out of the apartment… unless they were Mikasa, in which case they'd shake their head and then proceed to sternly lecture him for the next half-hour. However, Levi did none of those things; instead, the air around him turned so frigid that Eren was tempted to say that his neighbour had brought about the next Ice Age.

"Eren," Levi frostily uttered, and if Eren had been more cowardly then he might've wet his pants in sheer terror. "I had expected to see, at the very least, some colour in your wardrobe that didn't yell of your inability to function as a normal human being. Perhaps my hopes had been a little too high when I was thinking that you washed your clothes on a half-weekly basis, but this…"

Eren's gaze guiltily slid to the mess that was his clothing for an instant but, when he'd returned his attention to his furious neighbour, he nearly screamed when a hand shot out and bunched his shirt up in a powerful grip.

"Do you really expect me to pull out some sort of respectable attire for the two of us from this dump, brat?! You might as well try to get a diamond out from your arse than find something to wear here!"

"Oh, c'mon, it can't be that much of a big deal!" Eren scoffed loudly in an attempt to cover up his previous fright, while his surprise manifested as a half-amused facial expression. "Besides, they're all my clothes to begin with."

The disbelieving smirk that had all but plastered itself onto his face abruptly careened off his face and died when Levi let an animalistic snarl rip from the back of his throat.

"If you haven't noticed, brat, I don't have many friends and I have less pretty clothing than you have clean ones," Levi growled wrathfully. "Unfortunately, this particular friend is one of the only people I have known since my childhood and they're a pain the arse when they've latched onto something that amuses them, which just so happens to include my 'old fart's outfits'. If they weren't one of the only people that could tolerate my behaviour, then I would've stopped being friends with them a long time ago, but…"

For a moment, a bottomless darkness had blossomed to life inside Levi's pupils, but it disappeared in an instant when he bit off his words and wrenched his clenched hand out of Eren's shirt. Eren's eyes merely watched Levi in a silent daze as the man muttered something inaudible, hissed a few deep breaths into his lungs and stopped his increasingly wild ranting, before his neighbour sighed wearily.

"Why the hell am I even bothering with you…" Levi huffed quietly, almost as if he'd been talking to himself, but anything that Eren had wanted to say in response was cut off by the clipped statement that followed his words. "And no, Eren, we're not going to be throwing a pity party for ourselves anytime soon, so wipe that look off your face and go away. I can't rifle through your wardrobe and look for suitable clothing in this mess if you insist on hovering around me. Go scrub the kitchen or take a crap, why don't you."

And, with that rather charming order, Eren found himself forcefully expelled from his bedroom before a door was rather heavily slammed in his face.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"Scrub the kitchen, he says," Eren grumbled under his breath, as he scrubbed furiously at the rather large stain caking his dishwasher. "Become a slave in my own apartment is more like it…"

When he had given up on scratching pathetically at the door and flinging every profanity he knew at the stubborn wooden panels before him, Eren had been tempted to break it down, splinters be damned, and see exactly what his evil overlord of a neighbour was doing. Of course, the thought of having to pay the hefty sum that would've surely come with fixing the door weighed even heavier on his mind than the potential damage Levi was doing to his clothing and so, with a sigh, he had crawled away to clean his kitchen. He wasn't doing it for his neighbour at all, no matter what his mind said; he was merely wearing his sponge away on the smooth metal surface of his dishwasher because he was bored, nothing more.

To be quite honest, he had been ever so slightly appalled to find that there had been a few rather unidentifiable stains streaking across the rangehood and various other components of his kitchen. That, along with a few frolicking dust-bunnies and a fluffy clump that had disintegrated into a mass of spiders as soon as he'd touched it, continued to horrify him, even as he moved onto another stain.

It was true that he'd neglected to clean his apartment ever since Armin had accused him of living in a pigsty and, being the stubborn idiot that he was, he'd vowed that he wouldn't clean so that he could show his friend what a true pigsty looked like, but he hadn't expected to see this much mess. If it wasn't for his insufferable pride or his annoyance towards his neighbour, who was still holed up in his room, Eren might've gone to thank him for practically forcing him to clean his apartment.

Of course, that didn't mean he was going to show his gratitude to the grumpy man anytime soon.

It was almost as if his thoughts had summoned Levi because, when he next looked up from the dishwasher, Eren found a pair of cool grey eyes surveying him from his bedroom's doorway. The suddenness of seeing Levi's figure by the door almost forced an unmanly yelp to force its way out of his throat.

However, when he finally bothered to focus on his unamused neighbour, his eyes almost fell out of his head.

Eren had vaguely pondered over the notion that Levi wouldn't have looked like a man-child with a wardrobe that could rival his in uniformity if he stopped wearing baggy track-pants and shapeless hoodies every time he saw him, but his neighbour's current appearance had just confirmed what his mind had suspected all along. The black skinny-jeans that hugged his legs almost made him reconsider his preferences for females… and the form-fitting white shirt that clung to his chest and accentuated the raw strength in his arms caused Eren's eyes to glaze over ever so slightly. A rational part of his mind began to wonder how someone shorter than him had managed to make his clothing fit so well, but it'd quickly been squashed back down when his eyes roved over his toned form.

If he had any less shame than he already had and coupled it with his scattered state of mind, Eren might've allowed the drool pooling in his mouth to leak over and drip salaciously down his chin in a rather obvious display of his challenged sexuality. As it was, though, he couldn't help glancing rather dreamily at Levi's figure.

"Well," a dry voice cut through his reverie and, after he'd blinked rapidly for a few moments, Eren was greeted with the sight of Levi's patented smirk, "I was going to ask you for your opinion on my clothing choice, but I think the nosebleed's telling me all I need to know."

Levi snorted amusedly when Eren hurriedly brought his sleeve to his nose and cast a glare at him when he realized he'd been tricked, before he cast an appreciative eye over the kitchen and nodded to himself. "So you can actually clean, what a surprise.

"But really," he continued on, when Eren's eyes narrowed dangerously and his mouth flung open in preparation to bark some sort of protest against his harshly veiled compliment, "If you're quite done with your failed imitation of an affronted meerkat then I'd advise you to get out of the kitchen now. As much as I have faith in your ability to cook… I don't, so get out and go take a dump or something."

Although Eren was sorely tempted to argue or simply kick Levi out his apartment, he didn't have the heart to refuse anyone anything, no matter how annoyed he felt… unless, of course, they were a certain Mikasa-loving jerk by the name of Jean. After he'd thrown a rather pointed glare in Levi's direction and huffed unamusedly to himself, he discarded the sponge in the sink and stalked past the smirking man, before he picked up a set of (miraculously) clean clothes on his bed and headed off for a shower. As fun as it'd be to take a long and satisfying crap, there were better things for him to do than sit on his arse for the next half-hour and contemplate the cracks on his bathroom tiles.

Eren had just finished his shower and meandered out from his bathroom when the raucous sound of repeated knocking assaulted his ears. He'd told Levi to send the mystery visitor over to his place when he was done and he'd assumed that said mystery visitor would knock on his door sooner or later, but the sun had barely set in the sky. He had imagined that Levi's guest would come at least half an hour later, when he was done doing pointless things like watch the news and see what his neighbour was cooking up, but—

"Eren, get the damn door before Zoë kicks it down." Levi's almost-bored voice jolted Eren out of his train of thought and, with a sheepish grin, he moved to do just that. However, when he'd set his hand on the knob and opened it, he was amazed to see who was in front of him.

"P-Professor Hange?!" Eren stuttered, bare moments before the overly excited person crushed him to their chest and proceeded to suffocate them. "What…"

"Well, well, Eren, I didn't expect you to be Levi's neighbour!" Hange gushed excitedly, before they let go of his gasping form and skipped indoors. "This is going to be such a fun dinner!"

As Eren closed the door behind his back and wearily followed his eccentric professor inside…

…he couldn't disagree with their supposed idea of 'a fun dinner' more.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

As much as Eren hated to admit that he was wrong, he couldn't deny that the dinner had _actually_ been somewhat fun.

Although Levi had been responsible for blowing up his own kitchen –which, according to the unimpressed landlord, would cost a hefty sum of money and around two days' time to fix– and Eren had been sure that his neighbour was probably a bad cook, the lasagna that he'd just eaten had brought a smile to his face. Instead of casting his usual glare in his direction every five seconds or snarling at him, as he was wont to do most of the time, his neighbour had been forced to engage in pleasant, if not slightly strained, conversation with Professor Hange. Even though he was too busy eating to care for making small talk, his dinner companions had filled the silence with all forms of chatter that both entertained Eren and allowed him to forget that he was dining with his lecturer.

When dinner had been over, they'd gone to do more catching up (and smoking, if Professor Hange's request for a lighter was anything to go by) out on the balcony while Eren had stayed inside to clean up. The two adults had offered to clean but, after he'd seen the pleading glint in Levi's eyes when he'd tried to squirrel his way out of having a civil conversation with his friend, he had been more than happy to leave his neighbour to his fate while he'd loaded the dishes into the dishwasher.

Besides, it was his attempt at getting Levi back for trying to get stupid stories out of Eren about his lectures with his professor anyway.

He'd just finished unloading the last of his plates and was on his way to his bedroom to finish off one of his many research papers when Professor Hange's raucous laughter rang from the communal balcony. Although their amusement probably wasn't any of his business and he'd almost certainly be half-beaten to death if Levi found him eavesdropping, Eren couldn't help himself from squatting underneath the window leading to the back and craning his ear upwards to listen to what they were saying. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he might even be able to learn something about the two of them.

"So he's next, is he?" Professor Hange chirped curiously, and Eren quirked an eyebrow at the odd phrasing of his lecturer's words. "Ah, it's such a pity… I quite like him, you know, so I hope you can reconsider your choices."

"There's nothing I can do about it," Levi growled back, though his words were muffled in a way that suggested he was forcing his words out through clenched teeth, "I just do what I have to do… and besides, it's all just business anyway. After all, since when did I ever have a choice in these matters?"

"That's what you said last time, Levi…" His lecturer then muttered something that Eren couldn't quite pick up on, but he thought nothing of it when they continued speaking in an unusually serious tone. "Just make sure you don't get attached again, okay? I'd hate to see a repeat of last time's—"

"Tch, I get it already, you shitty four-eyes!" Levi snapped abruptly, and Eren was so badly startled by the unexpectedness of his neighbour's outburst that he hit his head on the windowsill with a loud crash. When a sudden silence greeted his ears, he hastily slid for his room and just managed to escape inside before the screen door opened and two heads popped inside.

Although Eren was safe from the suspicious eyes of his guests and was sorely tempted to ruminate over what he'd heard, the sudden vibration of his phone distracted him from his scattered thoughts. By the time he was done with talking to his worrywart of a sister, who'd heard about the fire on his level and had immediately assumed that it was his fault, his visitors were long gone…

…And so were the memories of their cryptic talk.


	5. Understanding

**_A/N:_**_ Once again, I'm not quite happy with the title... but it'll do for now. Oh, and beware; this chapter's a bit choppy and Eren is peculiarly dense. I tried to remedy things, but I scarcely feel like I did anything to make it better. Guess that's what happens when I try to review my own work about half a year down the track..._

_Beta'd by AutumnCadenza and Stately Demented  
secondary revisions are unbeta'd and will probably stay that way_

* * *

**~ Chapter Five [Understanding] ~**

* * *

_Three Days Prior: Eren's Apartment, Morning_

"Oi, Eren," a low voice growled close to his ear, and Eren mumbled sleepily before he turned around again. However, just as he was about to go back to sleep again, a fist landed bare millimetres from his face and nearly made him fall off his bed from shock.

"You don't do much in the morning, do you?" Levi casually continued, while the badly startled boy fought to keep his heart beating in his chest. "Seriously, who the hell's still sleeping when the sun's come up?"

Eren cast an irritable (and ever so slightly bleary) glare towards his amused neighbour as his throat attempted to force coherent and suitably snappy words through his mouth. "I'm asleep, obviously, and if it wasn't for you then that would still be the case!"

"You're clearly not awake enough to be polite, that's for sure," Levi muttered thoughtfully and, for a moment, Eren was almost sure that a smirk had fleetingly appeared on his neighbour's face. "I didn't come here to have an uncivilised chat with your half-catatonic body, though, brat."

"Then why are you here? I might as well go back to sleep if you're just here to annoy me," Eren grouchily shot back, though most of his frustration was lost in the yawn that immediately followed his words.

"Funny, Eren," Levi replied flatly. "Here I was, asking you to come jogging with me out of the kindness of my heart, and all you can think about is the wonderful prospect of drooling some more on your pillow."

It took a few moments for his neighbour's words to sink in but, by the time he'd wrapped his head around the proposition, Eren found himself staring confusedly at Levi's scowling face. He knew that the man liked to go jogging in the morning –after all, he'd been kicked out of bed before because the plumbing had failed in his neighbour's apartment– and that he ran a fair distance, if the heavy sheen of sweat that coated his muscles when he returned was any indication of the matter. He was well aware of how uptight Levi was when it came to his own health… but since when did he become a stickybeakand care for _his_ health as well?

For goodness sakes, they had only been neighbours for less than two weeks, not for their whole lives!

"As much as I'd love to live next to a sagging, decomposing corpse, I'd rather have a somewhat healthy neighbour to live next to for the next year," Levi hissed, and Eren belatedly realized that he'd been muttering his thoughts under his breath for his neighbour to hear. "So if you're done wallowing in your self-pitying ramble then I'd suggest you dress yourself before I make you run in your boxers."

Levi almost succeeded in tossing him out in accordance with his promise and Eren gained a few bruises for his failed attempts to kick his obstinate neighbour out in the minutes that ensued.

However, the college student soon found his arms and legs assaulted by chill winds as he gritted his teeth and raced his surprisingly fast neighbour around the local park. He hadn't planned to run, especially when Levi had made good of his word and accused him of being a spineless lump of blubber for denying the benefits of exercising, but what had ended up convincing him more than anything else was the memory of his neighbour's body after he'd finished running yesterday.

No matter how much he wanted to deny the innate joy that his day's exercise had brought for him…

…He couldn't help admiring Levi's lean body or the soft light in his exhausted eyes after they'd stumbled into their respective apartments for a much-needed shower.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_One Day Prior: Eren's Apartment, Evening_

The steady rhythm of his wrapped fists on the punching bag sounded pleasantly throughout his flat and melded with the harsh pants that escaped from Eren's parted lips. His mind vaguely registered the fraying threads hanging off the year-old bag, which had been Mikasa's previous birthday gift to him, and the small piles of sand littering the space underneath its suspended form from a few too many heavy hits, but its scruffy condition left his mind when a few rapid taps echoed in the break he'd taken in his night's activity. Eren's lips pursed tightly into a thin line at the interruption and he stalked to the door with the half-baked thought of startling his unexpected visitor with an affronted bout of yelling, but the notion died as soon as he'd flung open the door and smashed his neighbour in the face.

An elderly man living about three doors down from Eren nearly had a heart attack when a rather loud expletive tore itself from Levi's flattened face and burst into the previously silent air, but he was spared a trip to the hospital when Eren comically poked his face out, apologized profusely and proceeded to drag his semi-conscious neighbour into his apartment. Although the old man was tempted to call the authorities and report the ill-mannered man that had been skulking around the college student's front door for the past three minutes, he quickly dismissed the troublesome thought and thought nothing more of the situation. It never crossed his mind that said skulking man was the college student's neighbour– truth be told, he was completely and utterly unaware of the fact that there _was_ a new neighbour to begin with.

And besides, it was probably better to ignore the weird people living on his level than attempt to associate with them in any possible way.

While the elderly man shuffled back indoors and locked the door behind him, Eren busied himself with fetching an ice pack to appease Levi's growling, which was beginning to irritate his ears. How was he supposed to know that he would be unintelligent enough to stand that close to a door that was clearly hinged on his side? The irrational urge to yell at his neighbour rankled at his mind and threatened to make itself known when Levi cast an extremely filthy glare in his direction, but it subsided as soon as he spotted the trickle of blood leaking out from his squashed nose.

"Oh my goodness, Levi, I'm so sorry for hitting you in the face!" Eren exclaimed sorrowfully as he rushed forward with the improvised ice pack in his hand.

As much as he wanted to yell at Levi for interrupting his nightly routine or beg him to keep his punching bag's existence a secret –Mikasa had informed him of the difficulty she'd gone through to give him something considered a symbol of violence and counter-productivity so that he could burn off the excess energy he always had– his main priority was caring for his neighbour. Even if he was more inclined to throw him out and leave him to his own devices, there was a faint notion inside of himself that suggested caring as a better option than his baser instincts.

However, all thoughts flew out of his mind as soon as he caught his foot on a loose rug and fell towards his startled neighbour. Or, rather, when his fall was broken, a few milliseconds later.

When Eren finally felt his face connect with something soft, he'd immediately thought that he'd been fortunate enough to miss the hard edge of the coffee table and land onto his relatively softer sofa. He'd been fully prepared to get up and laugh awkwardly as Levi would, no doubt, begin spouting a few insults along the lines of how uncoordinated he was but, when no sounds seem to come from his unusually silent neighbour, he looked up from his fallen position… and realized exactly where he was.

Instead of landing on the padded cushions of the couch, as he'd imagined himself to be, he'd accidentally landed face-first into Levi's crotch.

And, from the stricken look on his neighbour's face, he didn't seem to enjoy the realization either.

By the time Eren had frantically lifted his face from its rather inappropriate position and managed to retrieve the ice pack from the floor so that he could stuff it over Levi's rapidly colouring face, his mind was in a full-fledged panic attack and his face was probably putting all tomatoes to shame. As he proceeded to throw his startled neighbour out of his apartment, along with the unfortunate ice pack, and had slammed the door behind himself, the only thing that he could think about was how large Levi's dick had felt under his cheek…

…and how, if he had been given the chance, he wouldn't have minded touching it some more.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_9 Hours Prior: College Lecture Hall, Morning_

Most days, Eren found that the tutorials he attended were often far too short for his liking; there simply wasn't enough time to mull over the latest murder case or heatedly discuss the best ways to prevent such random bouts of death from occurring in the hour that all lectures were granted. It was true that there were some lectures which finished rather satisfactorily and thus didn't require any further time to discuss it (like certain cases that made half the class go green in the face) but, for the most part, he didn't see how the tutors found enough time to cram all their interests into the one lesson. If he had a choice, he would've signed up for tutorials where there was at least two hours devoted to studying his interests, but the option wasn't available and he had to make do with what he had for the time being.

However, as his psychology peers got into yet another heated debate about the rising trend of suicide in their region, Eren couldn't seem to find the heart to participate loudly, as he often did, or even pay enough attention to everyone to notice what points of the argument were being discussed.

Often, he would be the one leading the discussion and he'd be the one that would effortlessly switch from defending the choices of the mentally ill to antagonising their inability to recover from their illness to get things going. Unfortunately, all he could really focus on was the blank sheet of paper before him. No matter how much he tried to write something down for his upcoming assessment on preventing death in his city, the college student could only focus on the vague thoughts that slipped as easily from his mind as the words that were bantered around him.

He glanced down at his sheet and started writing so he'd look like he was focusing; after all, he didn't exactly want to get a low mark for participation because of his increasingly uncharacteristic urge to sit and daydream in class. However, when the current dispute had died down and his pen had stopped skittering across the page, Eren realized that he'd written down nothing of productive value. In fact, after he'd squinted at his work and deciphered the illegible squiggles scattered across his page, he was somewhat appalled to find that he had been doodling on his paper.

What stopped him in his tracks and made him turn a rather frightful shade of white wasn't the fact that he'd been doodling instead of writing, though.

What had captured his attention… was the steely grey eyes that glared back from his page.

While Eren had let his mind wander, his hand had taken the liberty of illustrating his neighbour in varying shades of grey and black, as befitted his pen ink. Although he wasn't much of an artist and his doodles were probably more suited to a ten-year-old than a man his age, it was obvious that the various images staring back at him all depicted the same person.

There was the luminosity of his narrowed eyes when a stray beam of moonlight had fallen upon them scarcely a week before, when he'd abruptly gifted him with his gloves, and the half-smile that Levi hadn't quite been able to hide after Eren had finished drinking his tea the next morning. There was the half-amused and half-aggrieved expression that he'd worn when Professor Hange had begun to prattle about one of their many experiences with Levi in a long gone time, and there was the frightful terror that had appeared on his face when a cockroach had crawled out from the bathroom drain a few days after.

All sorts of expressions and memories flooded into Eren's mind as he stared at his doodling and, for reasons unknown to him and everyone else concerned for his wellbeing in the lecture hall, a bright splash of red intruded upon his curiously pale complexion.

"Eren, is everything alright over there?" the tutor asked with a faint hint of concern in her tone, but Eren was deaf to her query and everyone else's mild confusion as he stood up and left.

Despite the curious questions that people shot his way as he exited the lecture hall and made for somewhere, anywhere, that wasn't plagued with people or his irrational thoughts, Eren could pay them no heed in the face of his own confusion. He was probably going to get chewed out by his tutor for leaving the room in the middle of class or for simply skipping the past week's tute but, as he weaved confused through the college gates and made for somewhere far away, that thought was one of the furthest from his mind.

The only thing that was currently occupying his thoughts was Levi, really, and that in itself was a thought too large to ignore.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_6 Hours Prior: Local Park, Midday_

Today had been a particularly sunny day and, though Eren didn't much like the warmth of the great outdoors, he was content to sit underneath the shade of a particularly large tree and mull over the stupid thoughts plaguing his mind. He hadn't been able to stop his mind from rotating around the same old problems that had been assaulting it for the better part of the past week.

The thought of getting some sort of rest from his overuse of his mental faculties was becoming an option that was becoming more and more appealing with every minute that passed. As much as he wanted to run from the topic at hand and avoid his thoughts forever, it was becoming quite obvious that his mind was going to give him no peace until he sat down and confronted himself.

Although Eren had never been intimate with anyone in his life, he had been quite certain that he was sexually attracted to females that were around his age. A well-positioned glance at shapely legs or feminine curves was enough to make his heart race a little faster than usual and his extensive electronic porn stash did a pretty decent job of piquing his body's interest on lonely nights. Changing with other boys in junior high had done nothing for his overactive libido in his teenage years and the sight of chiselled abdominal muscles had merely made him feel jealousy, not lust.

Yet here he was, with his mind on his neighbour, and nothing could seem to explain away his confused emotions towards him.

There was nothing that really made Levi stand out from any other person in a purely positive sort of light, though there was no denying that he stood apart from other people as it was. The things that mainly spewed out of his mouth were expletives and sarcastic comments, rather than polite words and flowery language, yet Eren couldn't help feeling that his harsh words were more soothing to his ears than the gentlest of words. His actions were crude, but they were a refined and a bluntly honest sort of crude that differed from the closet smokers, drinkers and abusers in society. He was an anomaly in his perfectly happy world that was darker than his forgotten memories, yet his presence alone was more than enough to bring light into his life.

He buried his head in his hands as more conflicting thoughts swirled around his puzzled mind and attempted to concentrate on the even rise and fall of his breathing when it all became too much. The rhythmic sounds of his heart and his lungs were the only things he could hear in the park –which was odd, considering that there were normally birds twittering loudly in the trees during this time– so when Eren spied a pair of feet approaching his bench, he wasn't exactly startled by the person's curiously silent approach.

"Eren, is that you?" a familiar voice rasped, and the college student was almost sure that the world was against him at this point in time. "Aren't you supposed to be studying your arse off at college?"

"I couldn't," Eren sighed wearily, "I can't seem to concentrate on anything right now."

The scrutinizing gaze that Eren found himself looking up into when he'd removed his face from his hands lasted for barely a second before his neighbour's disinterested expression slid smoothly back into place. However, the thought that Levi had been just a little concerned about him made his heart do odd somersaults in his chest.

He had only just begun to fight the urge to suffuse his face in red again when Levi's next words caught him off guard.

"I was going to get lunch, and…" Levi huffed, before he mumbled something unintelligible.

When Eren simply replied to his neighbour with a befuddled glance and nothing more, Levi made an irritated noise, before he rephrased his words for the college student's benefit. "I asked you if you wanted to grab some lunch with me, you deaf brat, not whether you wanted to imitate a curious puppy for my half-arsed enjoyment."

Eren glanced searchingly into Levi's eyes as his mind tripped over the unexpected offer but, when he could find nothing to indicate any mockery or sarcasm in his grey depths, he merely shrugged, before he stood up from his bench and gestured for his neighbour to lead the way.

And so it was that Eren left the park with nothing resolved in his tumultuous mind and a heart that was beating far too frantically to be considered normal by anyone's standards.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Current Time: Eren's Apartment, Evening_

The past week had been almost torturous for Eren, thanks to his unwitting neighbour's influence on his overly active mind, but no matter what he tried to do to take his mind off things, Levi's distinctive features would inevitably worm its way into his mind again. Nights tended to be the worst, especially when he couldn't numb his mind with vigorous bouts of exercise for fear of disturbing others or lose himself in the bustling life of the city's daylight hours, because staring listlessly at the darkened sky did nothing to take his mind off his thoughts. Unfortunately, there were times when counting the stars in the sky was impossible, thanks to the increasingly cold days…

…and today, of all days, just happened to be one of them.

He had slogged away at his punching bag for a solid two hours –which was a feat for him when he considered the paltry half-hour he'd normally spend with it– when his stomach had settled down from lunch, but the dull ache of his hands did nothing to detract from the burning itch of unwanted thoughts in his head. He'd ran up and down the apartment stairs until he'd been kicked out by a resident complaining about the noise and he'd even gone to the trouble of immersing himself in his bathtub for a good hour, but the thoughts continued to burn a hole through his mind. Though he was tempted to brave the cold and go outside to count the stars anyway, the phantom chills that crept across his skin reminded him of the last time he'd gone outside on a frosty night and received a week-long cold for his pains.

So, with no other option in mind, he'd beaten a reluctant retreat to his bedroom to try the last thing that he'd wanted to do, but was almost guaranteed to get his mind off his thoughts.

In other words, he was going to blow his problems away with a little therapeutic yanking.

The only glaring problem in his highly flawed plan was probably the fact that the apartment's walls were excessively thin –he'd heard Levi swearing horribly on more than one occasion– and that he really, really didn't want his neighbour to hear him right now. Of course, the overriding need to force his tumultuous thoughts out of his mind was currently eclipsing the awkwardness that would most likely ensue when he'd next meet Levi. And besides, it was a natural part of a single college guy's life; there was no real reason for him to be embarrassed, because he'd done it countless times before, and it wasn't going to change because he'd suddenly seen his neighbour floating in his dreams.

There was still an obvious flush on his face as he flopped onto his bed and scrolled through his electronic porn stash, though, despite his attempts to rationalize his actions. If he was going to go through with his jerking off session, he might as well do it as quickly as he can and then wait for the blissful silence that would hopefully fog up his mind rather pleasantly for the next hour or so.

As he gingerly stuck his fingers down his pants and inched past the tight waistband separating his dick from the cold air around him, Eren couldn't help the slight wince that jolted up his spine when the cooler skin of his fingers came into contact with his semi-hard organ. He squeezed his eyes shut and began to stroke in time with the exaggeratedly lewd moans spilling out from his precariously placed earphone.

However, by the time he was fully hard, he was concentrating more on his increasingly heavier breathing and the slick sounds of pre-cum than the disjointed video playing beside him.

In fact, he was so busy fumbling for a tissue and holding the loudest of his moans back that he didn't notice the footsteps nearing his door until a loud slamming nearly sent him toppling off his bed.

"Oi, Eren, do you—" Levi's voice abruptly cut off when impassive grey sought out mortified green, but what made his eyes blow wide open was not the furious blush racing across Eren's cheeks or the rather explicit pornographic images flashing across the falling laptop…

…but the wrecked moan that slipped past Eren's lips as he abruptly reached his orgasmic high.

Eren's panting sounded harshly in the room as Levi stared in transfixed shock at the college student's glazed eyes. By the time he'd come to his senses and his eyelids were strong enough to support themselves, his neighbour was already long gone from the room, and the only things that indicated his fleeting stay in the room was his ajar bedroom door and the faint smell of green tea in the heavy musk permeating his warm room.

Although his conflicted feelings towards Levi had been resolved during his during the moment in between Levi's appearance and his sudden climax, his neighbour's mental presence refused to leave Eren's foggy mind. In fact, when he'd finally gotten over his euphoric high, the unsavoury realization that'd plagued him for the past week eventually cemented itself within his mind and refused to leave. It seemed that, this time, there was no outrunning the things he'd much rather hide.

Which meant that Eren fell asleep, after a few hours, to the realization that maybe, just maybe, he was going to tell his friends about his newfound sexual orientation in the near (or extremely far) future.


	6. Confronting

_**A/N: **Things are going to escalate in this one. I tried my best to keep the characters as in-character as possible but, from what I can see, there might still be a few things that I need to tweak if I want to get them perfectly in-character (or, rather, spread this chapter out across three or four chapters)... but, hopefully, it's still alright._

_Beta'd by Stately Demented  
secondary edits are unbeta'd_

* * *

**~ Chapter Six [Confronting] ~**

* * *

Eren tiredly sipped from the Styrofoam cup filled with heavily decaffeinated coffee and sighed at the bland taste that numbed his tastebuds. He hadn't had such tasteless drinks since he'd ran out of his sparse supply of Levi's teabags just a day ago, but getting more was out of the question when he hadn't so much as looked his neighbour in the eye for the past week and a half.

It was really much easier than he'd thought it'd be avoiding Levi, thanks to their differing schedules and the effort he'd exerted to keep it that way. However, the lethargy that crept into his body from the thought of attending his lectures and facing his friends had driven him to lounge motionlessly on the couch for days on end.

It wasn't just the awkwardness that had been weighing Eren down, though.

There had been headaches that had come and gone with just as little explanation as his long bouts of tiredness. Odd things had appeared in his periphery, only to disappear when he turned around. He swore he saw a bespectacled man stalking his dreams and the unpleasant nightmares of his childhood, where needles sunk into his arm and a host of faceless people gathered to watch, returned with a vengeance. His throat would seize up and his eyes well up with tears at random intervals and, frankly, Eren was far too gone to deal with his emotional and mental trauma. It had seemed like his self-awareness had screwed with his mind and the knowledge that his heart was catching up to his semi-deranged psyche needed a good few days to process– a good few days that didn't involve the trouble that came with re-entering the outside world.

He had only been able to summon up enough energy to do just that today, a good week after his wanking session had been interrupted and his mind had been thrown into turmoil. Even though he'd made an effort to go outside, the mere thought of sitting through an hour of Jean's loud mouth and Professor Hange's irritatingly enthusiastic mannerisms was too much for him to take and so, instead of pondering life questions in his lecture, he'd gone to an off-campus coffee shop to while away the hours instead. Because here, at least, he could be sure that he'd be left in relative peace to curse the sunlight and his miserable existence.

The chances of him running into anyone were slim to none here –unlike most sophisticated stores, this particular coffee shop was a veritable hole in the wall– which was precisely why he'd chosen this place, of all places, to re-integrate himself into the outside world. Staring at the cracked walls inside his apartment was only interesting for so long before he got sick of the sight and its subtle reminder regarding his dwindling bank account.

Yet pondering over his thoughts was an activity that would unceasingly pester him. The urge to frown, as more confused thoughts and blurred images swam to the forefront of his mind and became stronger by the second, grew with every lethargic breath he took. He could sense curious glances lingering over his relatively inert form and a foggy part of his mind attributed them to the waitress that'd served him when he'd listlessly wandered inside, but—

"Excuse me, sir. You've been staring at our counter for quite a while, and I was wondering… do you need anything?" a tentative voice piped up near him and, jolted out of his mental rambling, Eren blearily blinked at the waitress' shaky smile.

"…No, I'm fine, thank you," Eren stiffly replied, before he dropped his gaze back to his cup and left the nervous waitress at his elbow to her own devices. Ordinarily, he might've made a bit of small talk to lighten the mood, but he simply couldn't muster up the energy to care– which was hardly surprising when he could barely muster the energy to think beyond the muddled haze that was his thoughts.

For a moment, he wondered why he was sitting in a nondescript place with a crap cup of coffee in his hands as he pored over everything and nothing, but the brief confusion disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. As his eyes lost themselves in the placid surface of his overpriced drink and attempted to shove all thoughts of Levi and his disturbed mind in a dark corner of his conscience, Eren sank into a thoughtless stupor that consumed him for the better part of his time at the cafe.

In fact, he was so immersed in said thoughtless stupor that he found himself nursing a completely cold drink while the same hesitant waitress steered him out of the closing store when he next surfaced for rational thought.

And so, Eren plodded into his final lecture for the day with a muddled mind, a half empty Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hands, and the blankest expression anyone had ever seen on a living human being.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The first thing that Mikasa did, as soon as he'd shuffled through the lecture hall's door, was yank him into the chair beside her and fix the sternest expression she could muster onto her face. If Eren hadn't been so spaced out, he might've been a little confused as to why his foster sister was there to begin with. After all, they didn't exactly share any lectures or tutorials in college, thanks to their radically differing degrees, and it wasn't hard to tell that forensics bored her to bits.

"Eren, where have you been for the past week?" she hissed worriedly into his ear. "I couldn't call you, I couldn't reach you at your apartment and nobody knew where you were…"

A faint corner of Eren's mind briefly flickered with the recognition of her words and, in the deep recesses of his numbed brain, his rational thoughts connected her statement with the numerous missed calls on his phone and the frantic knocking on his door at ungodly hours. He had assumed that his neighbour or some other unwanted guest had somehow gotten a hold of his cell's number or had bothered to knock when the locked door refused to budge under his grip… but clearly, his plans had forgotten to factor the rest of the world into his irrational avoidance scheme.

_Well_, a small corner of his mind muttered, _at least I can trust Mikasa to care about me_.

"I'm sure Eren has a good explanation for all this, Mikasa…" another voice piped up, and Eren almost cursed aloud when Armin plopped into the seat next to his. "You can tell us what's going on, right?"

"Nothing's wrong with me, guys," Eren hoarsely replied when it became clear that Mikasa and Armin weren't going to leave him alone, yet all they did was shake their heads at his unconvincing words. "Look, I've just been a little—"

"Busy, maybe? You could've still called or at least told us that you weren't feeling well, couldn't you?" Mikasa's words stung, despite their soft tone, but he barely had a chance to do anything more than wince before Armin butted in.

"Mikasa's got a point, Eren. You haven't shown up to lectures, you haven't gone to your counselling sessions and nobody has heard from you for the past week and a half." Armin wearily shook his head at his three outstretched fingers, before he stared fixedly at his best friend. "We've got a right to know what you're going through and, right now, we're going to exercise that right. Seriously, Eren, what's going on?"

He'd imagined that his confrontation with Mikasa and Armin would've gone a little smoother… but, at the same time, Eren had been expecting this level of cautious concern from the duo in some part of his inactive subconscious. They'd almost had a fit when he fell and scraped his knee on the pebbles littering the college's walkways scarcely a month ago so, clearly, it would only be right for them to have some sort of aneurysm from his uncharacteristic silence. If anything, he was slightly intrigued by how well they could cover up their worry behind barely together smiles and overly false cheeriness.

…Really, how did he not notice the hollowness of their emotions before?

"Eren, please stop ignoring us." Mikasa cut into his thoughts abruptly. "Armin's worried, I'm worried and, right now, we really just want to know if you're okay."

"Please," Armin interjected, and Eren almost allowed a frown to mar his face when his best friend's widened pleadingly, "I swear, Eren, we're not going to do anything you don't want us to do. We'll even keep this to ourselves if that's what you want."

For a moment, Eren fought the urge to glare at his friend's puppy-dog eyes... but the urge abruptly disappeared when the meaning behind Armin's plea sunk in.

Eren's eyes immediately widened as he stared incredulously at Armin because, clearly, he must've misheard him when he'd said that he would willingly keep information from people if it meant that he'd be happy. Keeping any sort of knowledge back from the government was a crime that would almost certainly guarantee the disappearance of the miserable law-breaker from their society and Armin was the most obediently law-abiding citizen he knew of.

Yet here he was, offering to irrevocably stain his clean record for his sake.

If he hadn't been almost catatonic from shock, Eren might've found his face cramping up from the conflicting muscles that fought to contort his facial expressions into warring emotions. Was he supposed to smile incredulously at Armin's incredibly bold statement or sneer at his friend's rather obvious attempt to make him divulge his secrets? His face didn't seem to know the answer, and neither did his mind.

However, when he glanced towards his friend and found a serious light gleaming in the darkened blue of his pupils, he sighed noisily and allowed his lips to twitch upwards in equal amounts of resignation and amusement. It didn't take long for him to write down a few words onto the corner of his blank paper and tear two small pieces off for Armin and Mikasa to read, and it took even less time for them to read through what he'd written. As they glanced solemnly towards him and nodded their approval to his plan, Eren let his eyes drift upwards to the tardy professor and found a slightly more genuine smile drape itself over his face.

There was probably going to be a major fuss that would kick up as soon as he'd brought his sister and his friend back to his apartment for a recap of his week… but for now, he'd enjoy the peace while it lasted.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"There are so many cracks along this wall…" Armin had muttered as soon as he'd walked through the front door and, though Mikasa gently shushed him and cast a troubled glance in Eren's direction, her listless foster brother had stopped in the middle of the living room at his comment.

Eren had noticed that there were cracks along the wall –after all, he had stared at them for so long that he could almost memorize the erratic paths that they took over the chipped paint surface– but he hadn't quite noticed the extent of said cracks until now. Even though he was well aware of his visitors and his duty as a host to them, he couldn't help himself from stepping closer to the largest of the cracks and running a curious finger over the dried something staining its edges dark brown. Since when had there been so many hairline fractures spanning the lengths of his walls? How long had they been there, and what sort of violence had imprinted them into his walls?

And, most importantly of all, how long had he successfully ignored—

"Eren." His hand jolted slightly when another, more slender, hand hovered lightly over his fingers, before his glazed green eyes drifted towards Mikasa's stern black ones. "Don't avoid us when we're right in front of you. Let's sit down and talk about your week before you try and shut us out again, okay?"

Although his lips twitched downwards at the sharp tone in his foster sister's words and the wariness that even she couldn't quite hide, the cautious gaze of his best friend as he perched precariously on his couch tore him from his welling annoyance and leeched the tension from his muscles. With a sigh, he tiredly shook off Mikasa's hand and shuffled to his armchair, before he flopped into the overstuffed material and blearily stared at her as she disappeared into his kitchen. She came back with three mugs, each steaming with the government-regulated coffee that overflowed abundantly from his cupboard, and the sight was enough to force a silent sigh past his pursed lips.

Even so, he took the warm cup in his hand and politely sipped at the horribly bland liquid, while his mind tried to deceive himself into thinking that it was a heavily caffeinated cup of tea.

"So…" Mikasa murmured quietly, when Eren had finally glanced up from his chipped mug. "It's been a while since we've talked properly, and I want to know what's going on with you."

"You wouldn't believe me if I tried to say that I was fine then, would you?" Eren huffed grumpily, before he dismissed the evident concern in his foster sister's widened eyes and turned towards his best friend. "Now, I know that I told the both of you to come here… but really, do you have to check up on me like I'm some sort of incompetent toddler?"

"Eren, you're the one that's been acting like an incompetent toddler to begin with!" Armin began vehemently. "Even if we didn't want to worry about you, your absences make it almost impossible for us when it comes to minding our own business! Heck, even Jean was beginning to—"

"Oh, so what am I now, your science experiment?" Eren snarled sarcastically, and promptly quashed Armin's vehement excuses. "Does it really give you that much pleasure to check up on me like I'm some sort of pet subject gone wrong? Actually, maybe you think I'm just like those screwy criminals that the government keeps on sticking in jail for improper emotional conduct!"

"We're not here to hurt you," Mikasa interjected in the few moments that Eren took to down the rest of his tasteless drink and prepare for his next onslaught of anger, "Armin and I came here to hear about your problems—"

"Oh, so now the two of you decided to replace my official counselling sessions with your own misguided kindness, is that it?!" Eren spat out venomously, and a sick sort of pleasure unfurled in the depths of his stomach when Mikasa and Armin recoiled from his stifling anger. A darker, more animalistic, part of his mind allowed itself to revel in the palpable shock and fear emanating from them, before his mouth flew open once more.

"There's no way that you can change me, even if you think it's the right thing to do! And what is 'right' and 'wrong' in this fucked-up world anyway? You speak of hearing about my problems, but all you're going to do is shove your opinions down my throat, like what the government probably does with those non-conformists that we study in class!"

"No, Eren—" Mikasa began waveringly, while Armin whimpered slightly and clutched his mug with shaking hands, but whatever she had to say was cut off by Eren's furious tirade.

"Oh, sure, they preach about morality in this world because it keeps us in line, but they don't believe in it at all, so why should you? They scare us with stupid stories like how you'd be cast outside the walls to get eaten by the mythical giants that still roam in someplace other than our dreams but it's all just false rumours and idiotic bits of propaganda!"

"Eren—"

"So you want to correct me now… well, how _noble_ of you to care. But have you ever thought about whether you needed fixing up or not? We're all trapped in this world and we're destined to die, even if we're the most law-abiding citizens in this city, and we can't do anything about it! Our lives are vapid and vacuous, but do you ever think about how sad our world is?!"

"Stop—"

"I'm not the one that's wrong, guys! Look at the world around us, and you'll realize that it's the _world_ that's gone and fucked with us! So when you want to ask why there's something wrong with me, go ask yourselves about whether there's something wrong with _you_ first before you try and stuff the government's specially-made bullshit down my throat, will you? And—"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, brat, shut _up_ already!"

Eren almost bit his tongue clean off when the photos near his chair rattled from the force which his neighbour pounded on the wall, but it was nothing compared to the obvious flinch that vibrated through Armin's arm and flung his cup clean out of his hand. As the half-empty mug smashed onto the floor beneath and its lukewarm contents pooled onto the wooden floorboards, the occupants of Eren's apartment stared dumbly at the mess spreading across the living room.

When Eren finally clambered to his feet and broke the awkward tension in the air, it was unclear whether an hour or a minute had passed between the cup's breaking and its owner's almost laconic movements. If the moment had been any less serious, someone might've giggled at the dustpan that Eren had grabbed to clean up the mess… because, clearly, there was no way that a bristled head would be able to sweep either the coffee or their problems away anytime soon.

But neither Mikasa nor Armin sought to break the heavy silence clinging to their forms.

"I'm sorry," Eren murmured lowly, and almost stiffened up from partial embarrassment and guilt when two pairs of eyes snapped to his contrite ones. "I-I'm not sure what came over me…"

He swept up the broken ceramic shards under his visitors' unwavering gazes and, when he had retrieved a cloth to mop up the last of the cold liquid on the floor, Eren smiled wanly and shuffled into the kitchen without another word. He didn't care to explain himself, and the two others sitting in the living room didn't think to ask about what had just happened either, because the silence was too thick for them to breach again.

Which was why, when Levi came to knock on Eren's back door, he was greeted with the stifling oppression of a long and unbroken stretch of silence.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"Eren," Levi's distinctively gravelly voice growled for the umpteenth time. "Damn it, brat, stop ignoring me and open up the door already!"

The only response came from the sidelong glance that Eren gave the shadowy figure on his balcony.

"I don't know what the hell's happening with you now," Levi continued, even though it was clear that Eren's attention had shifted from his barely there presence, "and I'm not going to deny how weirded out I was by you… but stop throwing a pity party for yourself and get the fuck out here, right now!"

A tired sigh floated from Eren's parted lips, before his deadpan voice drifted from his listless position at the sink. "What makes you think you're the boss of me?"

"That's the damn problem, you little shit." A note of reluctance crept into Levi's growl at this point. "I know I'm not and, damn it, I don't know much about you at all. I might not be like your sister or that blond kid, but I know that—"

"And what, exactly, do you 'know', hmm?" Eren abruptly hissed, before he wheeled away from the broken ceramic shards littering his kitchen sink and advanced towards the screen door. "Everyone keeps on saying that they're here for me and that they're people that I can trust, but who's to say that you're not all secret agents for the government?"

When silence was the only thing that greeted him from the other side of the screen door, Eren jerked his wandering hand back from the doorknob and continued to rage at its hazy mesh. "Nobody understands the things that go on in my head, Levi, so don't pretend that you care! The counsellors at college might be there to 'correct' my behaviour and try to instil some sort of happiness into me, but what's 'happiness' in this world? When you pass by people in the streets, what do you see there, huh?! It's all emptiness! It's all just a massive lie!"

"Really?" a low voice issued from the other side, and Eren gritted his teeth when Levi continued to voice his own thoughts on the matter. "Think about it for a moment, Eren, instead of spouting shit at every interval. Are you against happiness because there's none of it, as you claim so loudly, or is it because you're scared to hold onto what little happiness you might actually have?"

For the first time since his anger had reared its ugly head a scarce hour ago, Eren couldn't seem to muster up an argument from his bottomless well of rage. As the silence threatened to consume him whole again, his neighbour's weary voice resumed speaking.

"What are you even running from?" When Eren refused to give a response to his query, Levi sighed noisily and continued to talk. "Okay, fine, so you're a confused little shit that doesn't know what he wants. Now, I don't pretend to know you –for fuck's sake, your rant pretty much discredits anything I could say on that topic– but think about it for a moment."

Another tired sigh made itself known again as Levi paused momentarily. "What's stopping you from being like everyone else? For all you know, they might be genuinely happy, but you just can't see it…"

"I can see just fine," Eren miserably mumbled, but his next statement was cut off by Levi's interjection.

"Of course you can see, Eren, that's why you don't have glass marbles in your head." An annoyed huff broke through his tight voice. "You just don't see enough to figure out what's what."

"Well then, give me one reason to open my eyes further, as you seem to suggest, and see something that clearly doesn't exist!" Eren furiously roared. "It's all your fault that I'm this angry to begin with anyway! If you can give me one fucking good reason then I'll stop ranting… but until then, there's nothing you could say that could ever convince me. But really, you know what? I don't even think you've got a good reason in your arsenal to begin with."

"I never said that I was going to convince you with my words," Levi replied and, for a moment, Eren almost thought that his voice was just a little smugger than normal. "Why else did you think I was hollering for you to open this damn door, you clueless brat?"

In the blind rage that followed Eren's comprehension of Levi's comment, it was almost impossible for him to hear the concerned caution of his rational mind as he fumbled with the screen door and flung it wide open. When his furious gaze clashed with the odd calm in his neighbour's silver eyes, he flung his hands outwards and screamed angrily at his passive neighbour.

"I'm not a fucking clueless brat, you stupid old geezer!" At this point, Eren was so caught up in his rage that he failed to notice Armin's half-stifled gasp or the sudden light that had flickered in Levi's eyes. "And I'd like to see you prove your words, you—"

"Oh, fucking shut up and kiss me already, you stupid hormonal brat," Levi growled, before he bunched up Eren's shirt in one tightly-clenched hand and yanked Eren's mouth down to meet his own.

_Huh_, Eren dumbly thought, as Levi's chapped lips moved against his own, _so his mouth actually tastes like green tea…_

His irrelevant thoughts were soon replaced with more important observations, like the fact that he had been rather rudely cut off by Levi's abrupt interjection. However, when he finally noticed that Levi had forced a harsh kiss onto his lips with a ferocity that was purely _him_, his mind was teetering on the brink of becoming dysfunctional.

He had imagined this moment so many times in his daydreams that he had almost expected the kiss to be something straight out of a cheesy romantic novel. Of course, there wouldn't be flowers and a convenient gust of wind like the sappy movies that constituted most government films but, at the very least, he had thought that it would be the perfect end to an awkward exchange of feelings. To get something so animalistic and passionate was something that his short-circuiting mind would've never dreamt of conjuring up (unless it had something to do with the sticky stains that often appeared in his pants whenever he woke up) but, as far as he was concerned, this was infinitely better than his daydreams. For one, it was real…

…and for another, he was so absorbed in it all that he failed to notice Levi's satisfied smile, Mikasa's blank expression, and the mortification painted liberally across Armin's face.

In fact, he was so lost in the feel of the moment that he never noticed his foster sister's or best friend's departure from his apartment until it was far too late to apologize for his rudeness. Then again, it was hard to think straight when he hadn't been thinking _straight_ for the past fortnight… and it probably didn't matter if he wallowed in this feeling for just a little bit longer, anyway.


	7. Culminating

_**A/N: **Apologies for the slow update; I only just recovered from my bout of the 'flu and I'm still not feeling 100%. There's a lot that I disliked about this chapter but, thanks to the sluggishness of my mind, I think I'll have to leave the heavy editing to another day, if I'm bothered to come back and edit it at all. For those who dislike smut, I've put a warning just before and just after it, so you can still skip over it and not miss out on the important plot point I'm introducing in this chapter... and that's all I have to say, I think._

_Beta'd by Stately Demented  
secondary edits are unbeta'd_

* * *

**~ Chapter Seven [Culminating] ~**

* * *

The floor was still splattered with spilt tea when Eren shuffled back into his apartment. Despite the fact that his slippers quickly became soaked with the residual liquid pooling on the floorboards and his feet squelched uncomfortably with every step he took, he paid no heed to his discomfort.

Instead, he simply collapsed into his armchair and stared resolutely at a small puddle of tea until somebody jolted him from his listless reverie with a warm fragrance and grating voice.

"As much as it might be fun to watch that crap soaking into your slippers and feet, you're probably not going to feel any better if you sit there like an imbecile," Levi huffed, before he handed Eren a cup of tea that smelt rather strongly of his neighbour's special brew. "So drink up, Eren, and get something into your system before you crash and die on me, okay?"

Despite the complete lack of eloquence in Levi's words or tone, Eren managed to muster up a weak smile as he received the cup with a shaky hand. While his neighbour settled into the armchair before him and sipped at his own cup of caffeinated tea, Eren busied himself with warming his unnaturally cold hands on the hot ceramic and blowing on the steaming liquid that puffed from its surface.

However, instead of partaking from the liquid straightaway, he set the mug down on the low coffee table before him and stared at Levi until he, too, set down his cup to closely examine Eren's unmoving gaze.

"What is it, brat?" Levi asked uneasily, as Eren continued to gaze unwaveringly at him. "I swear, if you're trying to do some passive-aggressive shit and burn a hole into my face…"

"No, it's not that," Eren murmured dazedly. "I was just wondering about something."

"So spill it, you little shit, and stop staring so damn hard at my face," Levi growled, before he crossed his arms and directed a piercing glare at Eren's semi-glazed eyes. "Enlighten me before I die of old age and crumble into dust from inactivity."

Although a snort fought to erupt from his nose at the absurd thought of a Levi-sized pile of dust in his armchair, Eren hurriedly squashed down his mirth. After all, it wouldn't do for him to irritate his neighbour any more than he already had.

When a few moments had passed and it was clear that Levi was awaiting an answer, though, Eren quietly asked the question that had been weighing on his mind since his rather abrupt kiss with his neighbour. "Why didn't you kick me or yell insults at me instead of, you know…"

"Are you trying to insinuate that you're a closet masochist, Eren?" Levi huffed disapprovingly. "Well, I never knew physical or verbal abuse got you going, if you know what I mean."

Eren began to splutter and blush furiously from his neighbour's bluntness but, just as he was about to make some sort of half-arsed attempt at denying his questionable kinks, a quiet chuckle stopped him in his tracks. By the time he had finally realized that Levi had just been pulling his leg, a reluctant yet irritated grin tugged on the corner of his lips in response to the low barks of laughter from the man in front of him.

"But in all seriousness, Eren," Levi finally said, when he had composed himself again, "I did what I did because you needed it more than anything else I could offer you."

Even though it was probably not in his best interest to question the implications behind Levi's words, Eren decided to complain anyway. "What exactly do you mean by that, huh? Are you so self-confident that you thought a little kiss from you would magic away all my problems? I'm not the princess in distress and you're nowhere near a knight in shining armour. This isn't a fairy tale, Levi; there's no such thing as a happily ever after here!"

"I'm not saying that I'm going to rescue you with a wave of my magic wand, you ungrateful shit." As Levi leant in towards him and glared into his eyes, Eren couldn't help feeling an odd sense of déjà vu at their situation, but it quickly passed when his neighbour continued speaking. "What I'm trying to say is that the walls are fucking thin, okay?"

"And what's _that_ got to do with anything?!" Eren started heatedly, but the underlying meaning behind his neighbour's words became all too evident as soon as he'd spouted out his hasty question.

"Well, I'd assume that your attempts to rival a tomato in colour would indicate your understanding," Levi dryly muttered, "so I guess I'm saved the trouble of enlightening you."

"No, you are _not_ saved from explaining things, Levi," Eren hissed quietly, before he gestured between himself and his neighbour jerkily, "because I don't fucking understand what you and I are nowadays. At first, you were just the annoying neighbour with good food—"

"_That_ certainly makes my heart pound," Levi muttered sarcastically, but a pointed glare stopped him from voicing his snarky thoughts.

"—_As I was saying_, you were just another person," Eren huffed in irritation, before he sunk back into his thoughts and his voice dropped into a contemplative tone again. "Then something upstairs went wrong, you kept on intruding into my life and now… now, I don't even know what's what anymore.

"So what are we, Levi?" When Levi jerked his head up at Eren's sad question, he almost flinched from the intensity of the dulled green eyes that stared into his own. "What… what am I?"

"Well, I can't help you with that last one, because only you can figure that out for yourself." When a hand entered Eren's vision, he almost flinched away from the appendage, but a fragile sense of calm settled over him when he noticed that it was only Levi's hand. "But I can help you with the first question."

"…Um, how are you going to do that?" Eren curiously asked.

"Tch, just take my hand, close your eyes, and let me show you," Levi growled. "And whatever happens between us stays between us. Got it?"

Even though he wasn't quite sure what Levi was planning or why his neighbour was imposing so many conditions upon him, Eren's curiosity was more overwhelming than his trepidation right now.

So, before he could back out of whatever this was… he closed his eyes and let fate sweep him along.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  
**please skip to the next bolded line if you do not wish to see why this is rated M  
**––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The soft sigh his new seat made as his weight settled upon it was so distinctly airy that Eren was almost certain he was currently sitting on his bed. It didn't surprise him, really, since the distance he'd had to walk with only Levi's hand as guidance hadn't been long, but the cogs still turned contemplatively inside his head as he wondered why he had been led here, of all places. Apart from the lingering apologies he had for all his displaced photographs –Levi hadn't really been all that careful when he'd brought him down the hall to his room– his mind was curiously blank… but he didn't resent the feeling much.

At least it made a comforting change to the thoughts which had threatened to drown him for the past few days.

Levi had let go of his hand for a while now, and the only sounds he could really hear were quiet rustles that said nothing of what his neighbour was doing. Was he rifling through his wardrobe and silently sneering at the mess that had accumulated since he'd cleaned it almost a month ago? Or was he seated at his study table and scanning the unorganized disarray spread across its surface…?

"Eren," Levi's gravelly voice suddenly uttered, "you can open your eyes now."

"Are you done with… whatever you were doing?" Eren cautiously asked, and his small voice sounded foreign to his ears then.

"I told you to open them, so open them." A hint of annoyance slipped into Levi's tone, but it was nowhere to be found when Eren unconsciously flinched from his hard voice. "Look, I'm done, okay? Now stop pussyfooting around and do what I'm telling you to do, for fuck's sake."

As his eyelids opened at Levi's command, the first thing Eren noticed was the fact that he was actually sitting on his bed.

The second thing he noticed was the absence of light in his room; clearly, he had spent far longer than he'd thought he had in his abrupt oscillations between blind fury and morbid depression. That probably explained why Levi had muttered curses that had sounded a little like 'damn my shitty eyesight' or 'where's the fucking light when you need it?' in the short amount of time it'd taken to traverse the distance from his living room to his bedroom.

Then again, the light switches were located in rather obvious spots, if his opinion was anything to go by, so there shouldn't have been a problem with lighting anyway.

Eren almost choked on a suppressed snort when he finally connected the regularly displaced objects in his kitchen with Levi's inability to navigate his apartment in the early morning, but all thoughts of laughter left his mind when the light finally flickered on in his room. It was a little hard to miss Levi, especially when he was growling profanities by the door…

…but it was even harder to miss his inexplicably unclothed state.

_Especially_ when his eyes refused to move from Levi's body.

"What, have you never seen a naked man in your life?" Levi dryly asked, and Eren felt a rather vivid blush suffuse his cheeks for the millionth time that day when he finally tore his gaze away from the impressive muscles lining his stomach. "Well, now you've seen one. Congratulations, Eren."

"I-It's not that!" Eren retorted, but the embarrassed squeak that had replaced his frustrated words caused a smirk to flit across his neighbour's face. "I was just w-wondering why you were—"

"In my birthday suit, as it were?" The smirk that stretched Levi's lips was positively infuriating, yet the only sensation Eren could feel was a distinct pooling of warmth in the one place that he didn't want to think about right now. "Well, wouldn't _you_ love to find out the reason why…"

At this point, Eren was clobbering his mind for attempting to add some sort of meaning to Levi's words while averting his gaze from the toned expanse of his neighbour's body. It would probably be a miracle for his face to get any redder or for his cock to react even more positively to Levi's presence at this point in time.

So Eren was rather mildly surprised when neither his face nor his dick reacted any further as Levi abruptly straddled his legs and ground straight down onto his crotch. Then again, it was rather hard to feel emotions when one's dick was overly stimulated, especially when the only thing that ran through one's head was a slur of profanities.

"L-Levi, what…" Eren shakily began, when the fireworks stopped erupting his head, but whatever thought his fizzling brain had instantly died when something distinctly hard bumped against his hip.

"I did say that you'd love the reason, Eren," Levi's breathy voice huffed straight into his ear, and Eren was embarrassed to find a strangled whimper issue from his parted lips. "I also remember saying something about changing your stupid mindset with something other than words, so here we go.

"…But really," his neighbour casually added with a particularly hard grind against his impossibly hard length, "Could you stop protesting at the change of events and just _go_ with it?"

Before Eren could attempt to correct Levi's misconceptions and express his preference for the rather pleasant change of events, the sudden lack of warmth in his lap made his mouth release a groan instead of its original retort. A rather firm tap of his hip caused them to jerk instinctively and, as soon as his body had come off the mattress, Eren found himself divested of his pants and boxers within mere seconds. When the cold air hit his throbbing cock, a groan ripped itself out of his throat, but the light breath ghosting across his face brought him back to his situation with Levi.

As his eyelids struggled open from their inexplicably closed position and found Levi's face hovering just before his own, his instincts decided to take over with a rather hearty 'fuck you' to his rationale. He found his eyes zeroing in on Levi's impressively hard length before he could stop himself and, before his mind could comment on the situation, he found his finger tentatively reaching forward and smearing the bead of pre-cum across Levi's dick.

Whoever had said that someone's height was proportionate to their girth was clearly mistaken, because the weeping cock beneath his fingertips was most definitely longer than his own. As Levi huffed out a ragged breath in response to Eren's trembling caress and his unconscious murmurs of appreciation, the movements running along his heated length became more and more steady. For a moment, as Eren glanced up at the wrecked expression on his neighbour's face, he wondered whether Levi had ever shown such a vulnerable expression to anyone else before.

However, the thought left him as soon as a rather warm palm encased his throbbing dick.

The moan that burst out of his mouth sounded far too loud to Eren's ears, but he ceased to care about the volume of his voice as soon as the warm pressure on the base of his cock began to spread up to the other, more neglected, portions of his leaking member. Soon enough, as their hands worked in tandem and their harsh pants mingled in the increasingly heated air between them, Eren began to feel his eyes glaze over from the sheer headiness of it all.

Instead of touching Levi in his dreams, he was making him come undone with his hands… and the lance of pure lust that shot down his spine and made his cock impossibly stiff was almost enough to make it spit out a spurt of pre-cum.

What Levi did next, though, really _did_ manage to make his dick jerk wildly in response, though it did so for a completely different reason.

"Levi…" Eren raggedly panted, when he'd recovered from being shoved down onto the bed. "What—"

That was as far as he got before he registered the fact that Levi had swivelled around so that his dick was directly above his mouth…

…and the warm wetness of Levi's mouth descending upon his pulsing cock in a way that made all his hazy thoughts fly out of his mind yet again.

"Haah… Levi…!" Eren moaned deliriously, while Levi's tongue licked a wet stripe up his hard dick.

"E-Eren," Levi growled in an extremely husky tone, as soon as his mouth had left Eren's weeping head alone, "could you s-shut up and return the f-favour, you damn piece of– nngh!"

Whatever words that his neighbour had been planning to say disappeared into a heady moan as soon as Eren's soft lips came into contact with his dripping cock and his tongue had flicked almost shyly into the pre-cum dribbling out of the slit. As Eren's hand came up to stroke the parts that his curious mouth couldn't take and his head began to bob up and down his throbbing red cock, Levi abruptly dropped his head down and hollowed out his cheeks, before he began to move in time with Eren's frantic movements as well.

It didn't take long for Eren to finish, especially when Levi's lips dropped to the base of his cock and he began to _hum_ around the overly stimulated length. The lewd pop of his mouth as he jerked his head back from Levi's dick was swallowed in the lustful cry that tore out of his lungs. When Levi followed straight after with a muffled moan and a few desperate sucks of Eren's cum-soaked tip, Eren found more cum shooting straight from his cock when Levi's load splattered straight into his mouth. Even though he was tempted to suck at Levi's lurching dick in the same manner that his neighbour was for him, the haze of his orgasmic pleasure prevented him from returning the favour.

So, instead, he pulled weakly at Levi's cock and jerked him through the remainder of his orgasm while Levi sucked him dry.

By the time he had come down from his mental blank and had forced enough oxygen in his lungs to allow his brain to function again, Eren found Levi fastidiously cleaning his face with a wet cloth which looked suspiciously like his unwashed towel.

However, before he could protest, Eren found his eyes sliding shut and his mouth forming a slurred 'thank you'…

…before he slipped into the welcome oblivion of sleep.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  
**...and now, we return to the plot parts of this chapter  
**––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The glowing numbers next to his face displayed numbers that would've been better off saying 'some early fucking hour in the morning' when Eren stirred in his bed and, though he groaned tiredly and attempted to snuggle back into his pillow, sleep eluded him. It became especially hard to sleep when memories of Levi's intoxicating scent and their activities some time ago invaded his mind and, with a grumpy huff, he finally conceded defeat and flung the blanket off his body.

He wasn't sure why there he was perfectly clean in his bed or whether his delirious mind had simply dreamt up the situation out of pure frustration, to be honest. For all he knew, he could've shuffled off to bed while Mikasa and Armin had shown themselves out after his disastrous shouting match with them and promptly fell asleep… but, for some odd reason, the warm tingling throughout his body seemed too real to be a dream. Perhaps he'd ask Levi later, when he'd finally mustered up the courage to confront his neighbour.

After all, it would take a while for him to get over that wonderful dream and control himself enough to have a normal conversation with him.

As Eren yawned and shuffled out of his bedroom, the first thing he noticed was the light in his living room. Had Mikasa shooed Armin away and decided to keep a lonely vigil on his couch, perhaps? The sudden mental image of his foster sister shivering on his sofa due to his own selfishness stabbed at his heart and, before he could control himself, his feet were already rushing towards the light at the end of his hallway.

What he found on his couch wasn't Mikasa, though.

Instead, Eren's eyes nearly fell out of his head when a pair of dull silver eyes met his incredulous gaze.

"Oh, so you're finally awake," Levi muttered tonelessly, and any rising hope that Eren had at the sight of his neighbour was abruptly quashed by the flatness of his voice. "Did you sleep well?"

"What…" Eren started but, when his voice broke after the first word, he cleared his throat and tried again. "What happened?"

"Don't you remember?" Levi countered quickly. "Or did I brush your teeth so thoroughly in your sleep that you can't taste the lingering flavour of cock?"

The blush suffusing his cheeks would've normally been enough to wrangle a snarky comment that would, more often or not, have something to do with his affiliation to tomatoes, but the complete silence from his neighbour caused his blood to rush back much faster than it normally would have. If Levi had been semi-serious in his statement… and they'd actually jerked and sucked each other off…

Then why was Levi giving him the cold shoulder right now?

"I'm not," Levi curtly answered, and Eren was embarrassed to realize that he'd spoken his thoughts aloud. "I'm just…"

A tired sigh slipped out of Levi's parted lips as his words trailed off and, before Eren knew what he was doing, he found himself crawling onto his couch and snuggling into his neighbour's side as an arm casually draped itself over his shoulder. They stayed in an amicable silence for a time, as Levi toyed with a loose thread on Eren's shirt and Eren breathed in Levi's comforting scent, but the silence eventually broke when Eren mumbled something into his neighbour's collarbone.

"What was that?" Levi asked curiously, as he wriggled his unoccupied hand underneath Eren's chin and lifted it up so that their faces were fully revealed to one another. Although Eren attempted to squirm out of Levi's grasp, he quickly admitted defeat when the grip upon his chin refused to loosen.

"I was just thinking…" Eren mumbled thoughtfully. "Are we, you know… together now?"

If Levi hadn't had both his hands occupied with Eren, he might've gone and punched his face in utter disbelief. As it was, though, the withering glare that he gave him before he dived in for a pointed kiss was more than enough to answer his question.

The dazed expression on Eren's face when he next surfaced for some air almost made Levi laugh, especially when he grumbled a little and flushed beet-red again, but the moment was ruined when a particularly loud rumble emitted from Eren's stomach. Before he could apologize for his stomach's awkward interruption or attempt to warn Levi of the relative emptiness of his cupboards, he found himself alone on the couch while his neighbour –it was too awkward to refer to his as his lover just yet– rummaged around for some food.

It almost felt homey to listen to Levi curse at his lack of food and angrily manoeuvred two clean mugs out of the cupboard where he stored all his cups and plates; if he closed his eyes and used his imagination a little, he could almost pretend that they were newlyweds in their own special home. Even though homosexuality was allowed in their society, the prospect of having a same-sex marriage was still a touchy subject and, as such, it was probably unlikely for them to ever advance past the stage of a de-facto couple. Besides, he couldn't really imagine how Levi would even start responding to a marriage proposal anyway, especially when he still hadn't heard how Levi felt about him—

The abrupt crash from his kitchen nearly gave Eren a heart attack but, when he'd recovered from the unexpected noise, he found his feet rushing towards the source of the sharp sound.

One of his mugs was strewn across the floor in a myriad of broken pieces while Levi held the other in his hand and stared uncomprehendingly at the scalding tea pooling near his own feet. His face was so pale that, for a moment, Eren wondered whether Levi had actually fainted while he was standing up, but the slow motion of his eyes as they lifted from the shattered ceramic on the floor to his wide green ones confirmed his conscious state.

"What's wrong?" Eren started worriedly. "Levi, talk to me—"

_'Attention all citizens,' _the radio announcerabruptly uttered, _'The Government would like to ask for everyone's co-operation. If any citizens happen to see a brown-haired, green-eyed boy that is approximately 170cm tall, please do not attempt to approach or interact with this individual. The authorities would like to notify everyone of this criminal's Class-A status and their High Treason against the State, and ask that everyone stay safe._

_'If anyone sees or knows of this individual, please inform the authorities immediately,'_ the announcer tonelessly muttered, and Eren's blood ran cold at its next words. _'As a threat to society, the authorities will immediately eliminate this individual, Eren Jaeger…'_

And, in an instant, Eren's world came crashing down around him.


	8. Escaping

_**A/N:** This... was a very late update, and I don't really have any excuse for it (other than a flood of assignments and work) so please accept my apology with a double update- where the 'double' will come tomorrow. We're nearly at the end and there's about one more chapter to go before I get to the epilogue, so thank you to everyone who's persevered with the story so far. Anyhow, this should be the last intentional cliffhanger (for obvious reasons) so... strap yourselves in, I guess. And if you guessed that something like this would happen, then kudos to you for doing so._

_Beta'd by Stately Demented  
secondary edits are unbeta'd_

* * *

**~ Chapter Eight [Escaping] ~**

* * *

"W-What… how… I-I don't…"

Eren's aghast spluttering was the only thing that could be heard in the apartment after he'd lunged forward to shut off the radio and, when his noises subsided, the silence that stretched between them grew uncomfortably heavy with each passing moment. As the tea cooled in the forgotten mug on the bench –Levi had put it down some time ago, after he'd noticed that his hand was trembling– and in the untended puddle on the tiles beneath, its once comforting smell assaulted Eren's nose. It almost made him sick with its pervasive intensity and how little comfort the herbal scent now brought him.

Eren desperately wanted to open his mouth and say something, _anything_, to break the tension between them, but his voice refused to obey him. The only noises that he could make were choked ones, but even those were muffled by the dead weight of his tongue and unmoving lips.

"Eren, I don't really know what's going on," Levi suddenly said, breaking the silence with a curiously subdued tone that Eren had never heard before, "but you don't look like a class criminal to me."

The small comfort that Eren received from Levi's belief in him lingered in the depths of his stomach but, when his neighbour moved forward and placed his cold hand on his cheek, all he could think about was the odd emptiness unfurling in his chest. That, and the unbidden moisture prickling at the corner of his eyes.

The last time that he'd cried had been a year or so ago, if his hazy memory was anything to go by. He couldn't quite remember what had happened, but it must've been bad enough for him to bury the memory deep inside his mind…

…but now, as Levi's icy fingers caressed his lips, all he could see was a film of tears blurring his vision.

"Talk to me, Eren," Levi said, and Eren was horrified to find that there was a faint plea in his voice.

Levi was supposed to be the strong one while _he_ broke down, not the one that broke down with him. There was something fundamentally wrong with his actions and, to Eren's befuddled mind, it was the factor that almost pushed him over the brink. As it was, though, he couldn't hold back the stray tear that coldly caressed his face and slid inexorably to the floor beneath.

"I-I don't know why," Eren mumbled thickly, after Levi's hand had drifted to his hair and he'd found his trembling forehead resting on Levi's collarbone. "I h-haven't done anything wrong… have I, Levi?"

Most criminals scheduled for public execution were often serial killers or fear-mongers that had justly owned their offense of High Treason against the State, yet he had neither killed nor stirred up the public. He had only lost his temper a number of times over the past month and been a little less happy than he should've been, and that was all. As far as he knew, he didn't have multiple personalities or something else that might indicate his ignorance towards his own action.

So was his anger really a legitimate excuse to class him as the highest possible category of offenders?

…Or did he really deserve to die for a reason that he wasn't aware of?

"Nobody ever deserves to die," Levi replied, and Eren quietly wondered why his mouth couldn't keep his thoughts to himself. "We don't choose when we cark it and, damn, we'd be gods if we could. You might go against the norm with your emotions, but you're no threat to society as you are."

"How would you know?" Eren shot back, as he sniffed petulantly and glanced at Levi with slightly swollen eyes.

The slight narrowing of Levi's eyes was practically ignored by Eren as he furiously wiped at the tears threatening to run down his face. However, when he finally sensed Levi's obvious disapproval of his faithlessness in him, he angrily scoffed and began talking again.

"Apparently, I'm a threat because I do things differently and I go against the natural societal order, but how can I protest when I don't even know why I've been selected to die?" Eren growled, as if he hadn't been crying mere moments ago. "Like, seriously, 'high treason'? What the fuck is 'high treason,' Levi?"

"The rate you change emotions is truly astounding…" Levi muttered quietly, but he didn't bother to repeat his statement when Eren raised his head and cast a challenging glare in his direction. "But in all seriousness, brat, you do realize that you're making absolutely no sense, right? And besides, arguing about shitty particulars with me will get you nowhere anyway."

"I'm going to die anyway," Eren stubbornly replied, "So I don't see the difference either way, Levi. Nothing matters anymore when I'm going to fucking die and neither you nor I can do anything about it—"

"_Don't_ say that." Levi's eyes hardened, to the point where they were almost like twin shards of frosted glass, and Eren gulped at the intense chill that raced down his spine. "You're basically implying that everything I did for you means nothing in the face of your death."

"I do care about you and the things you've done for me, but it doesn't make a difference whether I do or not." Eren sighed as his shoulders slumped and he leant heavily against the kitchen cabinet. "Don't you get it, Levi? Even if I believe your word is the gospel truth, it doesn't count for anything outside of this room! Fuck, even the average person would know that nobody has ever been cleared of High Treason in the history of our society…"

The noisy sigh that escaped from Levi's parted lips was far too loud for Eren's liking, but he managed to swallow down his cutting remarks in time to hear his neighbour's response.

"So you're basically trying to say that you've given up hope." Levi shook his head and cast a baleful glare in Eren's direction. "Wow, Eren, I didn't peg you as the sort that lay down and died quietly, but I guess it just goes to show that you're really just a whiny brat."

"I'm realistic, _not_ whiny," Eren growled, but it was clear that his developing temper was getting the better of his cognitive reasoning.

"And since when have you ever been 'realistic', Eren?" Levi snapped.

"What, are you trying to say that there's something wrong with me?" Eren yelled back.

"I'm not _saying_ that and you know it, you shitty little brat!" Levi roared, but Eren was already vomiting out a tirade of caustic sarcasm before he could stop him.

"Oh, look here, let's all pick on the dimwit non-conformist—"

"Goddammit, Eren, are you _trying_ to piss me off here?!"

"—and rain all our curses down upon him—"

_"Eren, I swear I'm going to slap you if you don't stop __**right now**__…"_

"—because who the fuck cares when he's a useless piece of—"

The slap echoed in the sudden silence that followed Eren's abrupt end to his rant.

As a red mark blossomed to life in the hand-print left in Levi's wake, the stricken boy could only open and close his mouth noiselessly in a cheap imitation of a stunned goldfish. A pale hand slowly came up to brush the bruising mark but, before it could make contact with the imprint that it had left, Eren was already bringing his own hand up to swat away Levi's questing fingers. To think that his neighbour, a man that probably had more visible muscle than anyone he knew, would _slap_ him and then have the _nerve_ to comfort him…

He didn't want his neighbour's supposed pity anyway, not when he could see the smouldering anger in the other's silver eyes.

And besides, he wasn't going to forgive him that easily anyway.

However, before he could rediscover his voice and yell at Levi some more, any words that had tried to worm their way out of his mouth were stopped short by the insistent rapping upon the door. Eren was more than happy to answer the door but, before he could, he found a hand covering his half-open mouth and an arm locked tightly around his frame.

Of course, it hadn't occurred to Eren that most respectable people wouldn't visit someone at such an ungodly hour, but his mind was too shaken to reason properly. Luckily, Levi was kind enough to reason for him on his behalf.

Not that he noticed or cared.

Before he could even hope to question Levi's actions or bite into the sparse meat on the hand covering his mouth, though, a harsh yell came from the outside. And, as Eren's mind digested the words and a sheen of sweat sprang to his brow, a soft whisper next to his ear stopped him from voicing the panicked whimper attempting to worm its way out of him.

"Do _not_ answer that door or make a noise when I let you go, okay?" Levi whispered beside him, as his frightened eyes sought out his neighbour's flat ones.

"If you value your life, stay away from the Feds outside and listen to what I'm about to say next…"

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"This is the Federal Police! In the name of the law, Eren Jaeger, open this door immediately!"

The knocking had ended some time ago and the repetitive (and almost robotic) orders for Eren to open his door had been repeating themselves for the past few minutes, but nothing had responded to their demands. No matter how loud or insistently they repeated themselves, the wood did not magically part underneath their hammering fists.

If anything, there had been no move to indicate that the occupants of the apartment had heard them at all.

Just as they had given up on waiting and were prepared to force the door open, a quiet series of clicks from the front door stopped their movements and, within moments, the door creaked open. The Federal Agents, believing the person to be Eren Jaeger, steadied their hands and prepared to grasp their anticipated target, should he attempt to escape.

However, the person that opened the door wasn't the brown-haired kid that they had been instructed to capture. In fact…

"…You don't look like Eren Jaeger at all, sir," the first agent muttered confusedly.

"It's probably because I'm not him," the unamused man in front of him replied.

An almost comical look of bewilderment flitted over the agent's face as Levi glared steadily at him, but the more agreeable-looking man standing beside him drew out a paper from his pocket and casually pointed towards the details printed upon there.

"Forgive me for interrupting," the pleasant-looking agent said without a hint of remorse in his tone, "but I couldn't help noticing that this is Eren Jaeger's listed address. Who might you be, sir, if you're not Eren Jaeger, and what might you be doing in his apartment?"

"I'm his neighbour," Levi replied in a tone that reeked of bland disinterest, "and I'm talking to two idiots that can't be bothered doing their job properly. What's it to you anyway, _sir_?"

The pleasant smile refused to leave the second agent's lips but, in the short silence that followed, the first agent shivered from the sudden chill that had descended upon them. Levi continued to glare unwaveringly at the second agent, despite the disintegrating bundle of nerves that shivered and shook in front of him, and made no move to move from his relaxed position against the door.

Soon enough, the icy tension in the air was broken by a soft chuckle from the more composed agent.

"Oh, nothing, really," the pleasant one replied in a smooth, even tone. "I was just wondering if you would be kind enough to accompany me to the station. After all, we'd like to find Eren Jaeger as soon as we can and, as a law-abiding citizen, it would be your duty to aid us in our search."

"But if I go, then who would house-sit mine or my neighbour's apartments?" Levi growled huffily.

"Ah, so Eren Jaeger isn't at home then, sir?" the first agent piped up hopefully.

It was almost like watching a lost puppy grasping at any stick it could find, in Levi's opinion. He snorted a little derisively at the mental image that sprang to life in his head, before he schooled his face into its usual indifferent state.

The agents in front of him didn't seem to notice his amusement, though, if their unchanging expressions were anything to go by.

"His presence elsewhere is of no consequence," the pleasant one interjected effortlessly. "It simply means that our other colleagues will have more work to do. But we seem to be wasting time here… so, if you will, Mr…"

"For god's sakes, it's just Levi," he offered, and watched as the agents' eyes looked at him closely, as if they had never noticed his features before. "And I can't say much in my defence, can I? Now, if you'll all stop gawking and get all this over and done with, I might be able to get back here in time for a quick morning jog."

When the two agents had recovered their wits enough to follow after Levi, who had shut the door behind him and escorted himself to the stairs, silence reigned over the third-floor apartment once more.

The residents continued to slumber, unaware of the man-hunt going on for one Eren Jaeger and the unofficial detainment of one Levi, last name unknown. In fact, apart from the few early birds and the police unit that had been mobilized to hunt down Eren, there really wasn't anyone that was aware of what was going on in the sleeping city.

And so it was that nobody heard the soft 'whump' of body on leaves as Eren leapt from his balcony and began his escape into the city's convoluted alleys.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Levi had gotten arrested for my sake, and I could do nothing about it._

That was the only thought running through Eren's mind as he twisted through alleyway after alleyway.

Eren could still hear Levi's voice whispering into his ear as the police had pounded on his door and called for him to open it. If he thought about it hard enough, he could even feel his breath tickling his neck. In fact, if he stopped and closed his eyes, he could still recall the shivers that had raced down his back at the ticklish puffs of air, along with the highly-inappropriate scenarios that'd run through his head at the odd yet not unpleasant sensation.

He could also recall the directions he'd been given to a place that he'd promised as a safe haven and the swift yet silent arrangements that Levi had made to grant him safe passage down the third floor. It had involved a few blankets, a great deal of faith in his ability to jump from said blankets to the neighbouring tree and a shitload of luck that he didn't really have, but it was good enough for their desperate minds at the time. Luckily enough, it had worked.

However, what he remembered the most was his neighbour's insistent reminders for him to go immediately. It was like he thought that he would be in danger if he didn't leave at once.

It was almost like… he was _scared_ of something that he couldn't comprehend.

Apart from Mikasa, who must've been an exception to any rule that life wanted to impose on her, and his mother, who he vaguely remembered, Levi seemed to be the most capable person that Eren knew in all the years of his life. Not only could he cook edible meals and make them mouth-watering delicious, he could also reduce him to an obedient and controllable puppy with a few harsh words, which was something that most people could never do in their lifetime. The only thing that he seemed remotely afraid of was anything that correlated to uncleanliness, like the dust-bunnies that delighted in frolicking throughout his apartment or the suspicious stains littering his walls and floors and other random surfaces. Yet even then it wasn't quite fright, or anything close to it; if anything, it was more like disgust and a smidgen of hate, but not exactly fear.

But this… _this_ had been something that Levi had feared with every fibre of his being.

Eren couldn't figure out why a few Federal agents would have that sort of effect on him. If anyone was supposed to be scared then it would've been him… but, oddly enough, fear was the last emotion he could see himself feeling. He had merely confronted his fate with no uncertain amount of anger and a great deal of resignation, but there had been no fear.

The government was the government, after all, so who was he to go against them? All he amounted to was a cog in the wheel, a particle in the grand scheme of whatever the world's agenda was, and something that would never be anything more than a struggling college student. Yet Levi had decided to go against them, for some inexplicable reason that he still couldn't begin to wonder about, and he had sacrificed himself for his sake.

And he just couldn't understand why the man would do something like that for him.

He could've lived a long life and gone jogging for many years to come if he hadn't meddled in his affairs. He could've done any of the things that Eren couldn't think about when his mind was too dead from exercise to amount to anything much. Heck, he could've even outed him when the Feds came around and earnt himself a nice reward for his efforts, like an honorary meeting with the mayor of their city to ask for whatever he wanted.

He had heard that people who dobbed in traitors (or suspected traitors, since it was hard to tell whether someone was an enemy to the state or not) would get hefty rewards. Some whispered of great sums of money, while others whispered of an elevated status in society, but he wasn't all too sure. All that he was certain of regarded the great benefits that Levi would've had if he'd gone and handed him to the authorities...

…but instead, he'd gone and taken up a lost cause for his sake.

Why would Levi do that? Why would he risk his life for a supposed 'brat' like him?

Eren slumped down in a nondescript alley to catch his breath, organize his thoughts and try to figure out where he was in the grand scheme of back-alleys.

He hadn't run like this since he'd decided to race Levi in a competitive sprint around the local park all those weeks ago and even then he'd stopped his mad dash around five minutes in, when he'd realized that racing an extremely fit man was not going to end in victory. He didn't really need to run like this, especially when he hadn't seen a soul since he'd leapt down from his balcony around half an hour ago. However, the thought of being captured and brought back (and the mere thought of wasting all of Levi's efforts) had spurred him on to run for his life.

It was at this moment that a sudden, terrible thought surfaced in his mind.

If his situation had been reversed with Levi's and he'd been faced with the prospect of his death, he would've rigorously attacked Levi if he had slipped into a depressed stupor as well. The chance that he'd lay his life on the line for someone that he'd privately admitted to liking would've been quite high as well, which was probably why Levi had done all this for him. If he had been in his situation, he would've done everything he could've to make sure that Levi got out alive, even if it meant that he'd have to put his life on the line– because he loved him, and he couldn't explain why.

And, for some odd reason, Eren had a feeling that Levi might just feel the same way he did.

Which brought him back to the thought that had plagued his mind, and which continued to do so.

With a sigh, he wearily allowed the thought to drift to the forefront of his mind again as he stood up and ran again. Hopefully, it'd be in the right direction… and hopefully, Levi wouldn't get killed.

_Because Levi had gotten arrested for his sake, and he could do nothing about it._

…_But he was going to die trying, because Levi had done it all for him._

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Mikasa had always told him to wear a watch so that he wouldn't be late to meetings, as he normally would be, but Eren had never bothered to listen to her sage words of advice. He had a phone, after all, and a phone was useful for telling the time when there wasn't an analogue or digital clock in sight, so he'd vehemently refused any attempts that his foster sister made to give him one.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that his phone was back in his apartment, he didn't really know what the time was anymore. And though it was tempting to curse his own stupidity, he decided to take stock of the situation, as best as he could.

The sun had come up, if the pale pink of the sky was anything to go by, but he had no other indication of what time it was. It had been dark when he'd leapt down from his apartment's balcony and fell into the thick foliage of the lone tree outside, if he remembered things right, and it had been just as dark when he'd tumbled down the branches and shot into the closest alleyway in his street. So now, it was light, when it had previously been dark… which wasn't exactly helpful to him when he wanted exact numbers. Though, now that he thought about it, exact numbers probably wasn't going to help him when he was on the run from Feds that only cared for his hide.

For the most part, Eren had been running for minutes (or was it hours?) on end with extremely short breaks to catch his breath in between, and he'd been so busy tending to himself that the sky's change in colour had come as an abrupt surprise. So now, as he stared up in slight wonder at the pink suffusing the sky, a few questions began to pelt his stalling mind.

Had it been minutes or hours since he'd ran away from his home? He couldn't really tell.

Was Levi safe, wherever he was with those government agents? He hoped so, at the very least.

Questions came and went with the even-paced speed at which his feet landed on the ground, one after the other, as he ran through alleyway after alleyway. However, Eren couldn't seem to answer any of them in a satisfactory manner, so he merely turned his gaze back to the ground and continued to put one foot in front of the other, like he'd been doing for almost all his life.

If his mind had been a teacher giving him a pop quiz, he would've failed long before he could get through half of his thoughts… but this was life, the hardest test of all, and he could feel his physical and mental strength giving up on him when he needed it most. Perhaps he should've taken those extra P.E. lessons when he was offered them…

But all his regrets dissipated into hope when a sudden left turn ended in a familiar-looking drawing that Levi had depicted as the final unguarded exit out of the city… though how he knew such an exit would forever elude Eren. As his pace picked up and his breath grew shorter and shorter in his chest, he felt his heart soar within him in a sharp contrast to his tired body. Because, after a few hundred metres…

…he would be _free_.

The elation that he felt at that moment was like nothing Eren had ever experienced before. It would've been clichéd to say that the very air thrummed with cheeriness and its taste on his tongue was the sweetest thing he'd ever sampled in his life, but there really wasn't any other way of describing his joy. If this was the happiness that Levi had challenged him to grasp with both hands, he was going to fling his whole body at it and seize it in a permanent embrace. If this was what freedom was like, then there was no chance in hell that he was going to let go of it so easily.

Of course, the thought of leaving his family and friends behind dampened his elation and caused his headlong rush towards the sunlit entrance to falter slightly, but the sadness was fleeting and was soon forgotten in the face of his reasoning. Wouldn't they be sadder if he were dead or, even worse, brainwashed into total obedience by the government? At least they could try and meet him again when he was free, and when he had established his place in the unknown world outside.

Maybe, if he was especially lucky, he could even set up a safe haven so that everyone else could attain true happiness with him in a place that was removed from the government's poisonous influence.

Maybe… he could even uncover the lies that choked their society in its stifling grip.

Eren was so buoyed up by his emerging hopes and his lofty plans for his future that he never noticed the figure standing under the shadow of the inviting exit. It was only when a hand shot out and grabbed his wrist in an unshakeable hold that he registered the figure's presence at all.

As the overwhelming mirth halted and subsided into lost confusion, he found his eyes staring into a masked figure that almost blended in with the grey of the walls around them. For some unfathomable reason, they seemed somewhat familiar to him, but he couldn't think of why in the moments that followed his abrupt surprise.

"…Who are you?" Eren asked dumbly, when it was clear that the figure wasn't planning on speaking to him anytime soon. He didn't know where the irrational question had come from, unless the video games that he'd played with Armin in his adolescent years were somehow affecting his thought process now, but it was too late to retract the question.

In any case, the supposed gatekeeper never answered him anyway.

Instead, he calmly pushed his hand backwards and dislocated Eren's hand with a startling lack of emotion in his flat, grey eyes.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Eren's howl was almost animalistic in its raw display of pain as his mind comprehended the impossible position of his hand. It was only a miraculous surge of adrenaline that allowed him to tear his arm loose from the stoic figure. If the situation had been re-enacted in a movie, he might've found it funny to see someone's hand lying flush against their arm, but all he could think about was the searing agony racing up the appendage and shooting his nerves to kingdom come.

He knew next to nothing about medicine but a small part of Eren's mind knew, with startling certainty, that he would have to reset his hand as soon as he could if he ever wanted to use it again. The pain would worsen for a few moments and then fade as the hand became accustomed to its natural position once more, but there would be more pain if he prolonged the resetting process for any longer. The best thing to do would be to reset it right now… but he couldn't, really, because of one little problem that was getting a little more irritating with each passing second.

Unfortunately, the supposed gatekeeper was rather intent on damaging more parts of his body.

"What the hell?!" Eren shouted through his pain as he barely managed to dodge yet another solid punch, but the silent figure neither acknowledged his comment nor ceased his violent attacks.

His dislocated hand throbbed with pain as he continued to dodge what blows he could and parry those that he couldn't avoid in time, especially when the figure changed their trajectory and delivered harsh hits to his screaming joint. There was no way that he could continue this when he was in no position to retaliate…

And so, in a last ditch effort to cut his suffering short, Eren threw himself towards his assailant and ripped his mask off his face.

The figure threw their head down and attempted to cover their face with the sagging hood over their head but the damage had already been done.

Eren had caught a glimpse of the other's face.

It was only for a split second, the man had covered his face up with a muffler he'd been concealing under his shapeless grey cloak, but he had immediately identified who his attacker was… and the realization had pierced his heart with a cold lance of agonizing confusion. Perhaps, in a few moments, he would blink and see that it was all just a horrible hallucination, and that he would wake up with a gasp and with sweat clinging to his body. But for now, the only thing his mind could do was short-circuit and spark, useless, in his head.

Because, of all the people that his attacker could be…

…why did they have to be _Levi_?


	9. Collapsing

**_A/N:_**_ Writing this killed me, and editing this killed me again; I still don't know how to tie this up in a more conclusive fashion, but it is what it is and I hope it's a good enough ending. There will most definitely be an epilogue and there's a strong chance of a sequel to tie everything together so, if this isn't satisfying, then hopefully the epilogue/sequel will clear things up. But enough of me waffling; I might as well get on with the story..._

_Beta'd by Stately Demented  
secondary edits are unbeta'd_

* * *

**~ Chapter Nine [Collapsing] ~**

* * *

_Surely, this is an illusion_, Eren thought, as his incredulous eyes stared into Levi's flat ones_. Have I been running so much that I've begun to hallucinate…?_

Yet even then, as his desperate mind conjured up reason after reason to disprove Levi's existence, it was clear to Eren that the man before him was all too tangible to be a construct of his mind. After all, it wasn't as if his mind could magically bend his wrist backwards and—

_Oh, wait, that's right. _Eren internally winced when the abused joint throbbed angrily in response.

_He went and broke my fucking wrist._

Before Levi could consider attacking him again (though, from the unnatural stiffness in his body, Eren highly doubted that he'd make a move anytime soon), he reached for his broken hand and grimly shoved it back into place. As another agonized scream tore through his vocal chords and echoed in the dingy alley, Eren dimly wondered whether Levi felt any sort of sympathy for his condition.

However, by the time the pain had dulled from an intolerable flood of agony to a slightly less torturous sensation, the only other things that Eren could focus on was the confusion…

…and, above all, the overwhelming betrayal that Levi's presence had brought with him.

"I thought you cared about me, Levi, so what's with the whole 'let's break his wrist and try to kill Eren' act?" Eren pointedly asked, and a part of him smirked at the way Levi seemed to stiffen up even more at his words. "Unless, of course, you're secretly into some really heavy roleplaying of the sadistic sort and you somehow managed to con the government into playing along with you…"

When no answer was forthcoming, Eren found an irritated sigh worming its way past his lips.

"You do realize that you can't fool me, don't you?" he snapped irately. "You're clearly Levi, though whether you're the Levi that I sucked off this morning is another question entirely, and you've obviously been lying to me… so don't you think it's about time you 'fessed up and explained the situation to me?"

An age seemed to pass before the muffler finally fell from Levi's face but, when his heavy frown was finally visible, Eren couldn't stop himself from feeling a slight sense of victory. If he could make Levi listen to him, there was a good chance that he could sway the demented notion that had seized his mind and get away without any further injuries. If he was especially lucky, he might even be able to extract a confession regarding the roots of Levi's sudden shift in mood, and have a stern word (or an exchange of blows) with the idiot that dared to tamper with those he cared for.

Because, clearly, Levi wasn't doing this out of his own free will.

Or, at least, he didn't think he was.

But first, he'd have to have talk to Levi and get out of here before anything adverse happened to him. Preferably before something other than his wrist got bent out of shape, perhaps.

"Talk to me, dammit!" Eren growled in annoyance, as he shook his head and took a step towards Levi. "You don't have to do this, you know! If you're being forced to attack me because someone's got leverage on you, I have friends that could help—"

"Help?" Levi echoed dryly, as a mirthless smile slithered onto his face. "Are you seriously offering to help me when you're the fucked up one here? Wow, you must be more clueless than I first thought if you really think that you could make a difference in this world."

"And what, exactly, do you mean by _that_?" Eren angrily hissed.

"I meant exactly what I said, you dim-witted brat," Levi retorted coldly. "You've got more screws loose than I do and, frankly speaking, I would have to be in a pretty deep pile of shit if I were to ever consider getting help from you. Or are you so stupid that you don't even know why you're being pursued by the government?"

Eren's rather empty expression suggested that the answer to his question was a resounding 'yes'. If he wasn't so sure that he'd broken down on his neighbour's shoulder mere minutes (or was it hours?) ago, he might've even thought that Levi didn't know about his confusion. But that wasn't the case, of course, so what did that mean for him…?

"You really _are_ the stupidest brat I've ever met in my life…" Levi muttered huffily, though something akin to amusement seemed to tug insistently at his lips when Eren squawked in anger.

"But really," he continued flatly, cutting off whatever Eren had to say in response, "as fun as it would be to waste time, I have things to do and places to be. So if you'd be good enough to stop catching flies with your mouth, we have some business to get through before I'm done here."

Eren snapped his mouth shut so violently that his teeth clacked together with the force of his movement. However, before he could open it again so that he could express his anger at Levi's rude comment, he found his eyes widening considerably when they landed on the small, grainy yet recognisable picture in Levi's hands.

"So, as our first order of business, let's play a game of 'guess the person', shall we?" Levi smiled mirthlessly again as he drew a little closer and brought the photograph towards Eren's frozen figure. "Who do you think this might be, Eren?"

Even though Eren refused to meet Levi's eye, it was clear to the both of them that he recognized the blurred picture in front of him.

After all, it was only natural for a child to recognise their mother's face.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"Carla Jaeger," Levi began, his voice flat with boredom.

"_Mummy!" the little brown-haired boy would often squeal, his voice high-pitched with excitement._

"We had her listed as a librarian in the only known library in the city… how interesting," Levi mused, though Eren gave no indication that he'd heard him at all.

_She always smelt of a dusty, woody scent when she came home from work. It was a nice smell, a comforting smell, and one that never failed to calm Eren down when he flew into his mum's open arms and snuggled into her warm embrace._

"But it seemed like this wasn't the only job that she did." Something seemed to pull at the corner of Levi's mouth as he recalled a forgotten thought, but the emerging mirth on his face was replaced by his emotionless mask once again. "Why, it seemed like she helped disadvantaged children as well. How noble of her to do so…"

In the depths of his hearts, Eren couldn't agree more, though he was careful to keep his thoughts in his head for the time being. After all, who knew if Levi would glean something from his words and twist them, like he'd already done with his feelings?

"There was just one problem with her work, though, wasn't there?" Levi said, before he shook his head and sighed a little. "This unregistered job brought her in contact with children that were better left alone. Wouldn't you agree, Eren?"

He wouldn't agree, of course, because siding with Levi was probably going to bite him back later on, but he couldn't help dwelling over…

…_the dark-haired, dark-eyed child that had accompanied his mum home one cold winter's day._

"_Mummy," Eren had warbled curiously, "who's that, Mummy?"_

"_Eren, this is your new sister," she had answered, while the girl had peeked out from behind his mum's skirt. "Daddy and I have decided to take care of her because her own mummy and daddy can't take care of her. Be nice to her, okay?"_

"_But Mummy, why can't her own mummy and daddy take care of her?" Eren had pouted, annoyed at the thought of sharing his toys and belongings with a girl he hardly knew._

_That had probably been the only time that his mum had become visibly distressed and just a little agitated at him… and, thanks to his fright from his mum's unknown emotions, he had accepted the strange girl for his mum's sake and found himself with a new sister._

_Not that he'd enjoyed it at the time, of course._

"…a tragic attack that ended her life." Levi had been talking without his noticing and now, when his thoughts had subsided somewhat, Eren couldn't understand what he was saying, not even when he continued mere moments later. "But it doesn't matter much anyway, since you know the details of it all… don't you, Eren?

"So let's move onto someone else a little closer to home, then," Levi added, as he tucked the grainy photograph in his pocket and extracted another, equally grainy, picture. "Does this person ring any bells, perhaps? I would assume she would, but I can never be quite sure with you."

Eren found himself faced with a face that he instantly recognised, just like he had done with his mother's bare minutes ago.

Because, this time, it was his foster sister's face that was staring stoically back at him.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"Mikasa Jaeger… or should I say Ackerman?" Levi smirked at the barely suppressed fire in Eren's eyes that had turned dark at his rhetorical query, before he continued talking. "I'm amazed that an Ackerman still exists, to be quite honest with you; I'd thought the government had dealt with them years ago—"

"You clearly thought wrong," Eren frostily bit back, but the smirk refused to leave Levi's face.

"But it doesn't really matter, does it?" Levi continued tonelessly. "She is an Ackerman, regardless of what you and I might argue, and neither of us can ignore the brevity of its implications."

"_She is an Ackerman, and we can't deny that," his mummy had said, "but that name means nothing now, because she's family."_

"_But why, Mummy?" Eren had asked, confusion evident in his tone. "Didn't the gov'ment say that the Ackerman people were bad?"_

_A sad expression had ghosted across his mummy's face as he'd finished voicing his questions, but Eren had been too small and confused to notice her uncharacteristic unhappiness. All he noticed was the odd half-smile that she gave as she ruffled his hair and took his hand in her own warm palm._

"_She's family now, and all family are good," his mummy had warmly replied, and he had nodded in response. He didn't really understand what she had meant at the time but, since his mummy was always correct, he'd grasped her warm hand in his soft one and left his worries behind._

_After all, he was…_

"…too young to understand the ramifications of your actions." Levi shook his head and sighed almost patronizingly at Eren. "But even then, Eren, I'm surprised that you continued to protect her, even when your sense of duty kicked in. Isn't it strange that you never second-guessed yourself?"

But he _had_ second-guessed his own thoughts, when he'd read about the government's justification for the 'Ackerman Massacre'. It wasn't hard to get articles linked to the most famous purge of his era when almost everything was at his fingertips in the local library.

_It was also easy for him to find out all those little things that his mummy didn't want him to look at, but which he'd found scattered all over the room that he was never supposed to go in._

"And really, Eren, were you so sheltered that you'd never been told of what the Ackermans were?"

_Nobody had ever told him of the Ackermans, apart from that one time with Mummy, until he'd heard his Daddy talking about it with his Mummy late at night, when he'd gone to the toilet, yet Eren had easily found out all the relevant facts in the newspaper clippings and reports that had been scattered across the floor of that one forbidden room. There had been a few difficult words that he didn't get, like 'jurisdiction' and 'socio-terrorism', but he had gotten the general gist of what had gone on from what he'd read._

_It wasn't as if the various pictures of burnt bodies in crematoriums were ambiguous in their meaning._

_It wasn't as if he didn't know that criminals against the societal order were cremated so that they could never be reached by anyone in their premature death…_

"You probably know something," Levi said, and cut across Eren's tumultuous thoughts as he did so, "but you're just being the stubborn brat that you are and you're keeping things to yourself.

"Of course, there's always the possibility that you don't know things at all," Levi continued, "in which case, I suppose I'd have to admit defeat and let you go. So there's just one final thing that I need to show you before I determine your guilt and do what I must with you."

Mikasa's blurry photo disappeared into his pocket again and, without too much fuss, he extracted the third and final photo for Eren's perusal. Instead of staring intently at the picture like he'd done with his mother's and foster sister's, he immediately glanced away from the picture and stared stubbornly at his feet.

Which was odd, but not entirely befuddling on his part… since it was his deceased neighbour's face in the final image.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"What's with the strong reaction, Eren?" Levi curiously asked, and it was obvious that his curiosity wasn't just an act on his part. "Is there something disturbing about this image?"

_Broken glasses, scattered in shards, littering the red-speckled floor…_

"No, nothing at all," Eren tonelessly replied.

_A pool of reddish-brown resting at his feet, which could almost pass off as a murky puddle of mud…_

"Are you sure?" Levi pressed insistently. "Is there _nothing_ you remember at all?"

_The mangled scars criss-crossing on the body scattered the white fragments jutting out of the skin and made it look more like a mosaic than…_

"A body," Eren whispered to himself, but the sudden light in Levi's eyes indicated that he'd heard him.

"Oh, so you remember a body?" Levi's smile, though completely mirthless, was almost triumphant to Eren's eyes when he finally looked up from his feet and towards his hooded silver eyes. "Was there anything _strange_ about this body, perhaps?"

_And one of his eyes were rolled up in his head but the other one, the other one that was staring straight at him, was greyed out with the faded grey of death._

_It was just like how the blood had congealed on the smaller cuts and solidified into a brown mass around his swollen tongue lolling out of his pale filth-covered head—_

"No," Eren gasped, and clutched his head as more memories assaulted him.

"No…?" Levi echoed, but Eren couldn't hear him anymore.

_His gaunt face made lean by stress and his sunken eyes hollowed by the same reason screamed at him of betrayal and pain which he could've prevented if he'd burst in and intervened but he'd have died along with his neighbour and who was he to throw away his life for a meaningless cause—_

"Stop, please," Eren moaned, but his thoughts continued to assault his mind.

—_he was just a neighbour wasn't he but of course he wasn't there was a familiarity to his features which mirrored his own but he'd never noticed them before not even when they'd appeared before him time and time again in his nightmares because he didn't want to admit that the dead man had been someone that was close to him and was connected to him and was—_

"Grisha!" Eren screamed, and Levi instinctively stepped back when the half-crazed boy whipped his head towards the sliver of sky above. "You were never my father! Never, you hear me?!"

"Whoa, Eren, calm the fuck down," Levi started, but whatever he'd wanted to say afterwards was lost in the broken wail that clawed its way out of Eren's throat.

_So all those needles jabbing into his arm and the people watching as 'Ackerman' and 'super soldier' and 'military research' (and later on it had been 'prototype' and 'failure' and 'useless human being') were really just memories his mind had suppressed to manifest as dreams—_

—His hands shot up and seized his head in a painful grip as yet another scream tore out of him—

—_and it was all Mikasa's fault for surviving and his mother's for being caring yet cruel enough to jeopardize her family and especially him by saving another's—_

"…you listening to me– dammit, Eren, get a grip!" Levi shouted, but it was all just static in his ears—

—_but above all it was his father's (no, Grisha's, not father's; he had never been his father and never would be) fault because he had crumbled under temptation and corruption to develop a tool of war for the preservation of his fucking happiness which never existed anyway—_

"Somebody make it **stop**!" Eren yelled, as his fingernails dug into his skull and drew blood in the crescent-shaped imprints it left behind. "Please… somebody, _anybody_, I'm begging you!"

But, instead of shouting at Eren as he'd done before, Levi shut his mouth and stood rooted to his spot, frozen in the emotionlessness that had descended onto him. Eren's head abruptly snapped back down and his crazed green eyes darted around the alleyway but, even then, Levi refused to move a muscle. Instead of seizing control, like he had done countless times in the short stretch of time they'd spent in, he could only watch as those frenzied eyes fell upon his form…

…and the final shreds of Eren's lucidity snapped in his heavily abused mind.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"How could you _**do** _this to me?" Eren screamed in fury, as his shaking finger pointed at Levi's still figure. "I was content without knowing anything and without knowing that the government would judge me for that bastard's actions! I was—"

"What, are you going to say that you were _happy_, brat?" Levi's voice, now deadened from apathy, swiftly cut through Eren's angered tirade. "You said that there was no such thing as that, so don't try to turn traitor on your own words now."

Levi's words would've probably been more effective on a brick wall, if the unchanging expression of rage on Eren's face was anything to go by, but his effectiveness (or lack of it) didn't seem to faze him all that much. If anything, his emotionless mask was unwaveringly firm as well.

Or, at least, it was firm enough to stay in place as Eren roared at him again.

"Yes, I _was_ happy, you fucking asshole!" He coughed violently and spat a mixture of opaque white and red onto the ground, before he continued his aggrieved rant. "I was happy believing that I had found someone who I could pour my heart out to and who clicked with me. I was happy dreaming of a future where I could come home to a safe haven uncorrupted by this fucking government and see someone that loved me unconditionally. I didn't remember a goddamn thing before I left… I didn't give a shit for why I was here and why nothing seemed to make sense… but then you came. And I thought that you'd come to love me, just like I had loved you, but I should've known it was all a goddamn farce!"

"What can I say?" Levi flippantly replied, as if he hadn't heard Eren's confession, and his vision went hazy with the extent of his ire. "I guess you were just a shitty little brat that thought his farcical attempt at puppy love amounted to something more."

For a moment, Eren thought that the drumming noise in his eardrums was because of the heady rush of adrenalin in his system. However, when it didn't abate, he turned his head up to the sky to see if it was raining… but he didn't find much to justify the thudding up there, either. When he placed a hand to his chest, he found an arrhythmic thud that didn't quite match the one he could hear. What was that thudding?

What was—

_Why's there a gun in my face?_

"It's not your fault that you weren't paying attention to me," Levi frostily hissed when Eren's face contorted in confusion. "I said I was going to eliminate any threats to the city, didn't I?"

"Then what are you waiting for?!" Eren didn't realize that the words were his own until it was too late to retract them but, to his horror, he couldn't seem to make his mouth stop moving. "Shoot me then! Shoot me like the dog you and the rest of the bloody government think of me as, and 'eliminate' me already!"

For a moment, it almost seemed as if something deep in Levi's eyes had shifted at his provocation, but the moment soon passed and his face hardened into an emotionless mask. As the thudding got louder and louder, the man that he loved (in the past or in the present? He wasn't sure anymore) curled his fingers around the gun and squeezed the trigger with his hands—

"**No**!" a voice screamed, and Eren whipped his head to see who is was.

However, before he could gaze upon the intruder, he felt a searing sensation in his arm and a great pressure…

…as Levi shot a bullet into his left shoulder.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_As he fell, Eren blearily registered the bright red scarf that his sister always wore… though why he could see it was beyond his reasoning. He thought he also saw his best friend's distinctive golden hair and heard a broken scream tear itself out of Armin's throat, but he wasn't too sure either._

_All he knew was that he had been shot and that his life was ebbing out in gushes of blood._

_He felt a hard pressure on his back as he thudded onto the concrete beneath, just as his head was overcome with searing pain. But the pain was getting duller and duller with every passing second… and so was everything else that he could sense._

_As his vision began to fade to black and his thoughts began to leave his mind in a flood, Eren found his eyelids sinking down with infinite slowness._

_The last thing that he saw, before he sunk into the dark depths of his unconsciousness (and almost certain death) was Levi's face hovering over his own…_

…_and the last thing he felt was a droplet of water on his face, as if someone had just shed a tear for his passing._

_But that was impossible, of course, because he was nothing at all._

_Wasn't he?_


	10. End

_**A/N: **And now, finally, this fic draws to a close. Although I have the second epilogue/sequel prologue thought out in my mind, I was wondering if people would rather see the 'spoof' scenes that I wrote during the moments when things got too depressing and my twisted sense of humour reared its ugly head. If you've got any thoughts on what I should post first, please feel free to drop a PM or a review- but otherwise, thank you for reading, and I hope this is a fitting end to this story._

_Beta'd by Stately Demented  
secondary edits are unbeta'd_

* * *

**~ Chapter Ten [End] ~**

* * *

The apartment was dark when Levi returned to it, but he didn't notice it at all.

All he could think about was that moment, hours earlier, when he'd taken Eren's life.

He had thought that he could shoot over the brat's shoulder and give him a fair warning, but his hand had jerked at the last possible moment when Eren's shitty friends had come along and caused him to lose what little focus he had. Levi had always prided himself on his steady aim but, as his bullet had sliced through Eren's shoulder and shot it to kingdom come, he had cursed at how steadily it had pointed at his body. If he'd tilted the gun upwards just a little bit more, he would've been able to avoid hitting Eren at all. If his hand had been shaking, he might've been able to shoot wildly, like he'd intended to.

But at that moment, as his arm had jerked downwards, that blasted shoulder had been in the crossfires. Even he, an experienced marksman, could do nothing to stop the bullet from lurching out of his gun and into that shoulder. Heck, even the _government_, with all its power and authority, wouldn't have been able to command that fucking bullet to stop or reverse the damage it'd caused in its wake.

If he'd been alone and there had been no interference from the damn government, he would've probably done something to ease his pain and that of Eren's in those final moments. He would've rushed to his side and cradled his head for the first and last time as those brilliant green eyes faded and his dirt-smeared face paled in its deathly repose.

Yet all he'd done was crouch above his dying body, like a fucking heartless dick, and pretend that the water running off his face was sweat, not tears. Then, when they'd rushed up to Eren's prostate form, he'd stood up and turned away, walking stiffly towards the cruiser which'd brought him here.

They'd congratulated him hours later, when he'd somehow managed to drag his body out of that car and into his agency's main building, but the words had sounded dull and hollow to his ears. What was the victory that everyone spoke about against the Ackerman family? Was he supposed to celebrate like they did, as if the life he'd taken was like that of an inconsequential being?

…Did they really expect him to pretend that the world had been set right as a result of his duty?

Because they had truly believed that Eren Jaeger was a threat to society. He had too, when he'd first met the odd boy and found himself sipping second-rate tea in a decrepit apartment block just minutes later. In fact, he had continued to hold onto his steadfast belief in the righteous order that he'd served for the better part of his life for the majority of his dealings with Jaeger, from watching those explosive temper tantrums to the incidents he'd heard from Hange. He'd honestly believed that the boy was hiding something in a piss-poor manner, just itching to explode in a way that would confirm all the rumours documented in his report.

But something had changed in the month he'd spent with the kid.

He still didn't know what had changed within him– no, not even when he'd sucked the kid off and then shot him down hours later. All he did know was that the boy had not been the threat that the higher-ups had perceived him to be, and he had been too spineless to rebel against them.

Sure, he could've tried to overturn Eren's impeding execution, but who was he to do anything about it? Just like the deceased brat had hinted at, he was just another piece that the government used and a person that was, for all intents and purposes, someone that was worth nothing at the end of the day. As shitty as the thought was, the only reason he hadn't been eliminated straight after the brat was because nobody had caught onto his little infatuation– except for Hange, who enjoyed watching him squirm much more than they enjoyed looking upon his corpse.

Something dislodged itself from where his elbow had been seconds ago and plunged to the floor, where it promptly shattered into several pieces. Levi cursed and instinctively withdrew from the fallen ornament, but the white corner of something peeking out from its ruins caused him to lean back in again. Even though his hands had been overly abused by all the scrubbing he'd subjected them to, he still stretched forward to take the curious object before him.

And what he found, when he'd taken it out, was a picture that he'd never seen before.

From what he could see by the dim moonlight filtering through his blinds, it seemed as if he was asleep on his bed, though when he slept was a mystery to the chronic insomniac. By his bed, there was a familiar brown-haired kid gazing fondly at his sleeping face…

…and, as Levi stared into those pensive yet vibrant green eyes, he felt something shatter inside of him.

Levi had prided himself on his stoic nature and professional standards. He had truly believed that his attempts to charm and then execute Eren would've ended with a clean break, where he'd sneer at the traitor for being foolish enough to trust him and promptly erase him from his memory. This had been why he'd gone and seduced the kid, knowing full well that he was putting his heart on the line too. This had been why, as he'd sucked him off, he'd forced the kid to do him too– to get some sort of gratification from a thankless task, and to cement his supposed 'feelings' in the brat's naïve mind. He had thought that he was impervious to pain, which was why he had ignored Hange's warning.

But now, as the photograph dropped from his numb hands and its scrawled message stared up at him from the remains of his forgotten ornament…

…Levi found himself staring blankly at his hands as emotions raged within his burst chest.

Agony burned at its helm, bringing tears that seeped out of his eyes and carved a searing path down his cheeks. As a small whimper forced its way through his trembling lips and more tears splattered on his trembling hands, the name that he wished he could forget slipped out as well.

"Eren…" he whispered, broken and raspy, "why?"

Yet nobody answered him in his dark apartment, because he'd killed the only person who could.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_I love you, Levi. If only you could see that and love me too._

_Forever yours,_

_Eren Jaeger_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––


End file.
